Rabbits on the Run
by rufeepeach
Summary: Rumbelle AU, where Belle trades away an unborn child to Rumpelstiltskin in return for her freedom. The curse hits before he can collect, but their deal is more complex than he ever imagined.
1. Chapter 1

Calonari prompted this picture

This is a Rumbelle AU, which is kind of a Skin Deep/The Price of Gold mash-up, where Belle trades away an unborn child to Rumpelstiltskin in return for her freedom.

—-  
**Rabbits on the Run**

**Chapter 1**

—-

He appears in a shower of gold and stardust. Truth be told, it's one of his grander, more impressive entrances.

The woman in the corner looks up. Well, Rumpelstiltskin would like to call her a woman. She is more like the dirty, haggard shell of what was probably once a very beautiful girl.

She can't be older than twenty-five, but she looks about fifty.

Lady Belle of the Marchlands, the daughter of Sir Maurice. Imprisoned in shame for her illicit affair with a lower knight of her father's court. He knows everything about her, and yet her state still shocks him to his bones.

"You called for me, dearie?" he makes a flamboyant gesture, expresses his triumph. He can always sense the most desperate of the people who call him.

She will accept any terms he offers.

"Yes." She croaks, and tries to move, but she's curled in a little ball in the farthest corner of the tower, and it appears that the stones are all that holds her in one piece, "I did."

"Hmmm…" he eyes her with obvious greed, and not a little bit of disdain. He was once like her, and he knows that emptiness, the wretched hunger in her ice-blue eyes. She believes that magic will solve all of her problems, and that he will provide such assistance.

One day, he'll find someone strong enough to resist, to work their own way out of their own damn mess.

Admittedly, her situation does look fairly hopeless.

He dances across the room to her, kneels before her so his face is level with hers.

"What would you ask of me?"

"I want…" she coughs into her palm, and he hides his alarm when there is blood on her hands, "I want to go."

"Go where? Be specific, now, dearie." But he's a little gentler, a little calmer, because this isn't a grasping peasant wishing to rise above her station, or a King in need of an heir: this is a starving, sick, and dying woman barely out of childhood.

"Someplace… safe."

"And what will you pay me, for this service?"

"What's your price?"

"I need something precious, something… special." He sounds out the last word, hisses it into her face. The fear in her eyes is beautiful and awful.

"I don't have anything in the world."

But that's not true. He doesn't know if she knows, but she has something infinitely precious, something deeply and wholly special, which many would ask her to give up without reward.

"You're _pregnant_, dearie, did you know that?"

And of all the things for her to do, the wretched thing smiles, "Of course. Why do you think that I'm here?"

"Then you have something of value to give, don't you? In payment?"

He's asked this question to a million desperate and grasping women. And all have winced and shuddered, as she does, all have cowered before him as he frightens them. And all have acquiesced; all have given him the one thing that they should have only clutched tighter with the threat of it being taken.

She will agree. If only to save her own worthless little life, she will agree.

"My baby needs a mother." She states, quietly, and oh, there's strength in her. There's some iron in her spine yet.

"Yes, she does; but you, dearie, need more than anything to _breathe_. Don't you?"

"Yes…" she exhales, and her breath is rancid and sickly. She swallows, and Rumpelstiltskin can see the gleam in her eyes as she imagines that one essential human need,_ freedom_. "My baby will have _everything _she needs?"

"You have my word." He makes a little bow, head tilted down, then grins up at her, all pointed teeth and rotten menace.

"Words are ashes. Write it down." She croaks, and he can feel her slipping away from him. But he wants the deal, and the baby will die with the mother, so he takes her hand and sends a trickle of magic into her, to wake her from her stupor.

He conjures a pen and parchment from thin air, their deal spelt out in black and white. Her feverish eyes devour the terms, the conditions: every word they've spoken since he arrived.

And she signs it.

And she smiles, like a mad woman, like a demon.

He wants to throttle her, to press his fingers into her jugular vein and save the child from the burden of such parentage. This woman who would abandon her child for one more breath of clean air, and who does so with a gleaming, beaming smile.

But he made this deal, and he tested her to this point, and this is the way that the game is played.

Rumpelstiltskin was a father, once upon a time. He gave everything he had for one more moment with his son. He would have _died_ rather than give up Bae, but that is something this rotten creature could never understand.

He swallows down his murderous, sickening anger and snaps his fingers. They both vanish, and he watches through the looking glass by his wheel as she stumbles through the forest of the Northlands to a village, as she finds sanctuary in a convent.

He wonders if she'll dismiss it, as so many have, as the vision of a woman on the brink, as a fever dream. Perhaps she'll wake alive and safe, and believe herself rescued by a handsome, silent protector.

But no one could call this sickly green-gold skin beautiful, and silence is a virtue denied to demons.

Rumpelstiltskin smiles.

* * *

All Isobel can do is run.

It's all she's good for, really, running and hiding in dark corners.

She's brave enough to make escapes: she doesn't fear the unknown. When something makes her life unbearable, she changes it. She doesn't worry about what comes next, she isn't afraid that she won't make it, that she can't hack it on her own. And this is the fact she clings to, as her feet slam against the pavement, and the dawn starts to break, and she is nowhere.

She hasn't stopped running since the day she ran screaming from the hospital, terrified by her mother's wasted body.

She ran from the bullies in the schoolyard, when they jeered at her glasses and books, when they pulled her hair.

She ran from her father, when he spat on her and threatened her lover.

And now, she runs from the love that turned on her, who became jealous and held her too tightly, tried to break her so she couldn't get away.

It's harder, these days, because she feels like she's running for two.

But now, she thinks, now she's finally found sanctuary. When she arrives on the convent doorstep, and the Mother Superior ushers her inside. When she devoutly prays every night, as her mother had, as she hasn't since she was a small child, and the nuns take pity on her.

When Sister Astrid makes room for her in the refectory, and talks her through the steps to taking Holy Orders.

And Isobel isn't a religious fanatic, nor disciplined enough to enjoy a life of celibate silence. But she's been running for so long, and she's come so far, and here she is in this safe, closed little world of women: women who smile at her at dinner, who bless her in communion, who accept her as one of their own.

So she keeps her mouth shut when rebellious thoughts slip into her mind, and says the Lord's Prayer at sunrise, and bows her head when the Mother Superior says grace before her meals.

Isobel's such a skinny thing that no one notices when, as weeks turn to months, she starts to fill out.

She'd come to them that early morning with bruises on her face, starving and desperate. It makes sense that, with security and friendship, decent meals every night and long hours of sleep, she would put on some weight.

She has a glow in her cheeks, starts to show her emotions more on the surface. Sister Astrid is amazed when – in the middle of a rather emotive reading from the Book of Matthew – the usually quiet and reserved girl begins to weep openly.

But the months wear on, and the Mother Superior becomes restless that Isobel isn't showing signs of leaving, finding someplace of her own. But she has nowhere else to go – the idea of leaving Storybrooke is unheard of – and she likes it here, in the peace and quiet of the convent.

She starts to drop hints about trying to join the community, take her Holy Vows and stay here forever.

Because all Isobel has ever done is run and hide, and this is the safest, darkest, warmest hiding place she's ever found.

Astrid is worried when she falls ill, starts to throw up in the mornings and is put off her food. But it's not food poisoning, and she has no other symptoms, and the Mother Superior is looking at her sideways, disapprovingly. Isobel's urge to run starts to pump in her veins once more.

That's the look her father gave her, when he'd caught her and George together. That's the look George himself wore, when she had innocently flirted with a guy in Granny's and he dragged her out by her arm.

As he slapped her face in their tiny, cramped apartment, as he accused her of sleeping around, declared her a slut and a whore.

That look makes her sick to her stomach.

And because she can barely hold anything down, these days, she makes a dash for the bathroom.

It is in that stall that Isobel's mind catches up with her body. And she cries, tears streaming down her face and onto smooth porcelain.

For the life she cannot give this small and fragile thing. For the life she should have had, the way this should have happened, that will never happen now.

Perhaps she's known all along. Perhaps that's why she finally left George, and ran so desperately, and why her every movement suddenly feels so weighty, so heavy with importance. There is a child inside her, breathing her air: the blood of her blood.

She was running for the both of them.

She doesn't even consider getting rid of the baby; but not because she's surrounded by Catholic nuns, or due any particular view on the idea as a concept. She keeps it because here is the thing she cannot run from, the person who has to love her, to give her a chance. Here is the person she has to love unconditionally, and without restraint.

And she does. She feels the child kick beneath her trembling palm, and for the first time since her mama died, she doesn't feel at all alone.

Astrid tries to convince the Mother Superior to allow her to stay, but it's no use. Rules are rules. There are to be no children in the convent, and no mothers with dependents. She is allowed to stay until the baby comes, for the sake of her health and the child's. And then another solution must be reached.

Now she's back to running, running for two.

* * *

Gold really, really hates nuns.

They're fairies in disguise, and fairies were never his friends. Even when they had worn sparkly approximations of ball gowns and granted wishes, they had been self-righteous and delusional.

At least, he thinks, the new robes of black and white suit their disposition better.

Fairies were convinced that magic was a tool for good, a life giving force. And who knew better the folly of that than the Dark One? Magic takes everything; magic steals away the very goodness that the Blue Fairy tried so hard to protect.

The same Blue Fairy who stands before him right now, a straight-backed, dark robed vision of cleanliness and order in his chaotic dragon's den.

She has a look on her face like she's smelt something foul, all scrunched up nose and drawn eyebrows. He resists the urge to giggle like his old manic self: having a fairy enter the lair of a monster is always an amusing sight.

This woman helped to send him to prison, once upon a time.

He never got around to thanking her for that.

"Mother Superior," he smirks, "Well, whatever can I do for you today?"

Magic is a funny thing, and this Curse is a doozy. He knows – of course he knows – why she's here. She's here to deliver him his due. She's here to, unknowingly, honour a bargain made long ago, in another world.

She's here to shop in Sir Maurice's starved, sickly and pregnant daughter, and her unwanted child.

They make their bargain, and beneath the white paper and word-processed agreement, 'adoption' and 'legally binding' and 'sound mind and body', lies something else. Under there is a contract signed in ancient ink on creamy parchment. Under there is magic, humming beneath his fingers as he holds it for her.

Then the fairy smiles at him, and he feels a little sick.

For a woman of God, a woman of healing and repentance, the Mother Superior is a malicious little thing.

* * *

Isobel feels the first contraction, and she curls on her bed and cries, huge, whole-body wracking sobs. She wraps her arms around her stomach, as if to hold the child inside, as if to prevent this from happening.

She packs her things quickly – there isn't much to pack – and prepares to leave. And she's crying, of course she is: this is the best home she's ever had, and now she's back in the night, back alone in the world.

Astrid couldn't stand to watch; she'd gone to the chapel to pray for her, for her safety and for the grace of God.

The Mother Superior offers to drive her to the hospital. The look in her eyes – too warm, too sweet, too _motherly_ – should have tipped Isobel off. It should have made her turn it down, brave the world on her own.

But she's running for two, now, and she needs all the help she can get.

Astrid comes with them, her last friend in the world. She holds her hand when the doctors dose her up with painkillers, and doesn't even wince when Isobel grips hard, as she pushes the baby from her body. It's a relatively easy birth, and the child barely even cries when she's laid on her mother's breast.

Astrid is the third person ever to hold baby Rose in her hands, slim fingers wrapped carefully around the dark little head.

She hands the baby back to her mother as her head whips around to look at the door.

There's a man in the doorway, resting his weight on his cane. He's small and slight, dark-suited, his expression intent and _hungry_ and mournful all at once. Isobel holds her new daughter closer to her chest, tries to shield her from the intensity of that stare.

Everyone in town knows Mr Gold, and if he's here now, moments after her daughter's birth, then there's something deeply wrong. She feels she might be sick.

"Why is he here?" she asks, and the Mother Superior is _smiling_.

"He's your salvation, dear. He'll take the baby, and you will return to us, a pure and chaste woman once more."

* * *

The girl is scared, and protective of her child. Gold would almost believe it; almost _respect_it, had he not known her in another life.

This child was abandoned long before she was born. He's simply here to carry her away, to set her free. This new human mind of his needs these rationalisations, sometimes. He needs to know that he isn't a kidnapper, a cruel and heartless thief.

So he enters, wielding an envelope with a copy of their agreement. The Mother Superior had forged the signature, all nice and legitimate. The baby would be his.

But under that, under the veneer of the legal document, lay something more powerful. Their deal was forged in magic and desperation, an extraordinarily potent combination.

That would make her agree to this, not challenge him. Her blood was tied to this deal, to this arrangement.

She would obey.

His face is a mask of calm and geniality, "Well, this all seems very cosy."

And the girl is shaking, jogging her baby, who starts to whimper softly. But it is the timid little nun, sat by the bedside with her hand in the mother's, who says, "You can't have her."

The Mother Superior shoots her an annoyed glance, "Hush, Sister Astrid."

"But he can't, Mother, can't you see? The baby is Isobel's!"

Ah, _Isobel_. Regina must have been running low on creativity when she picked that one: Sir Maurice's daughter's name had been Belle.

"Don't you worry, Sister, the child will be quite safe with me."

"Rose needs her mama," Isobel says, in a quiet kind of daze, "I am her mama. I go where she goes."

"I'm afraid the terms are fairly specific." He hands her the contract with a snake's smile, slick and gleaming. No one breaks deals with him, in this life or the last.

But she's staring at the page in wonder, smiling despite her exhaustion, and she traces one line with her finger. Only Gold could have seen it glowing, noticed the little sparks of magic that come from the contact of her skin and the page.

She's highlighted a clause in the original deal, a detail he'd hoped to hide. It bleeds from parchment to paper, a further example of the fickleness of magic.

"It says that the child is to remain with its mother." She breathes, and her smile is beatific. He had been right, all those years ago, in that rank and fetid tower prison: in health, in safety, she is a very beautiful girl.

"It says," he replies, slowly, "That the child is mine."

"It says both." Sister Astrid weighs in, and they both turn to look at her.

_("My baby needs her mother." _

"_Yes, she does"_

"_My baby will have everything she needs?"_

"_You have my word.")_

He had been tricked, all those years ago, blinded by hubris. Who knew better than he to guard and treasure every word? And yet he had thrown them at her feet like shards of glass, and now he paid the price.

The deal is struck: he is obligated to take the child.

He is equally obliged to leave her with her mother.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

It's a strange situation Isobel finds herself in, with Rose clutched to her breast, wrapped in the blanket Astrid brought from the convent, as she crosses the threshold of her new home.

_Home_ is a word Isobel hasn't understood since she was a small child.

It's her new resting place, her new jail cell. She cannot run from here, not without losing her daughter. No one should be without her mother.

Astrid comes in next to her, tries to smile, "Well, it's… homier than I expected."

"It's a cave," Isobel murmurs, but she attempts a small smile for her friend's benefit, "But I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Yeah, it'll be great. And I'll come see you all the time, and you can visit us… whenever." Astrid's trying not to cry, and Isobel wraps an arm around her, so Rose is held between them.

"At least he's not here." Astrid's smile is watery, wavering at best, "Maybe he won't even be around too much."

"Hopefully."

Astrid drops Isobel's duffle bag, and gathers her into a proper hug, mindful of the baby still snoozing in her arms. Rose is a quiet child, of this Isobel is grateful, but the movement causes her to wake and cry softly. Isobel bounces her a little, head on her shoulder, trying to soothe her.

She is afraid that soothing her child will be her main activity from now on.

Mr Gold is many things, but a soothing presence isn't one of them.

"He said your room was in the western corner?" Astrid asks, picking up the bag again and making for the stairs.

"Yes. It should be the one with the cradle in it."

She follows her friend upstairs, trying not to be curious, trying not to peer in doorways and explore the house. She's afraid of what she'll find, hidden in locked rooms and cupboards, in the house of the man the whole town reviles.

But he's powerful, and strong, and there are several people in Storybrooke who would happily testify that she's insane, and an unfit mother.

If Isobel lost her daughter by breaking Gold's deal, then Rose would be taken to her father. Gold is bad – awful, really, a monster – but he isn't violent, isn't psychotic or sadistic. George Gaston is… something else entirely. Isobel shudders to imagine what could happen to a child left to be raised in his care.

For her daughter's sake, she's here.

One day, she will decide her own fate. One day she will look at the horizon and know that she is free, that she may walk the path she chooses.

But for now, she is a rabbit, scurrying from one bolthole to the next.

At least this one is warm, with sunlight streaming through coloured glass. At least no one can touch her in the cave of a dragon. And she has a friend nearby, a friend who will come and visit, who would notice if something happened to her. Her faith and her trust are placed in Astrid's slim, cold little hands.

All her hopes that she won't be swallowed by this monster's home, never to be seen again, rest in the belief that this one woman won't forget her name.

But, of course, there are others out there who remember her, and her daughter. A week into the new arrangement, the Mother Superior arrives. She stands on the doorstep, her warmest smile on her pretty face, and Isobel automatically stands aside to allow her entrance.

The Mother Superior sweeps inside, and asks – oh, so sweetly and humbly – for a cup of tea, finding the nicest chair in the living room within moments and colonising it before Isobel can react.

She doesn't understand the feeling of invasion, the simmering anger she can sense in her veins.

She chalks it up to post-natal hormones, and pours the tea.

Astrid has visited every other day in the week since Isobel moved in, but she has seen no one else. Even Mr Gold she has seen only once, and it was an awkward and formal encounter.

Nods exchanged in the hallway, nothing more.

"How are you holding up here, dear?" The Mother Superior asks, all motherly concern and tenderness.

Isobel doesn't know how to answer; she sips her tea to buy some time, and thinks for a moment, "I'm… doing alright. No medical complications, apparently."

"And how is little Rosie doing?"

"She's fine, better than." Isobel hasn't slept a full night in the week since she was discharged from the hospital, and doesn't anticipate doing so for a while.

But Rose is everything, and the curtains in their room are heavy, and it isn't like Isobel has anything she'd rather do or think about than caring for her daughter. To do so feels a little like ingratitude toward whatever providence allowed her to hold on to this precious little thing.

"You look a little tired, dear," the Mother Superior prompts, "Is there anything you would like to talk about?"

The unease in Isobel's stomach tightens into a hard little knot, and she moves away from the nun's comforting hand on her knee.

"I'm fine, honestly," she yawns, over-egging it just a little, "I am a little tired, though, and Rose is already down for a nap, so…"

"Are you sure you're handling this okay?" she's frowning, and Isobel wants nothing more for her to leave right now.

But she's also the woman who took her in when she had no place else to go, who offered her a home for however short a time. She was trying to do the right thing, a rare enough thing in this world.

So Isobel settles back, and tries to listen with an open mind, "I'm doing alright. Really, I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. I love her so much." She infuses every ounce of love she has for her beaming sunshine-daughter into her words, trying to convey to this holy, motherly woman how happy she is to just have Rose near, to know that she is hers.

But the Mother Superior's smile has turned sickly and saccharine, and her words are barbed and a little cold to the touch, "Oh, well that's lovely dear. But this isn't about you: this is about the baby. She needs a real family, a mother and a father. You need to give your daughter her best chance."

Maybe she's right. Maybe Rose would be better off with a couple, someplace in a nice suburb, with a dog and a swing in the back yard, somewhere else, far out in the world.

The idea tears through her heart like a shower of needles, and her chest physically hurts.

"Don't you think it's time to let go, Isobel?" the Mother Superior has leant forward, taken Isobel's cold and trembling hands in hers, "Mr Gold can find the baby a_ real_ home. He's not as bad as you might think: he's recently donated a massive amount of money to the Order…"

And something cold, hard and cruel clicks in Isobel's head. Her blood runs as ice; she can taste metal in the back of her mouth, and something sour and acrid.

How could this woman, this smiling, holy woman, have _sold_ her daughter?

"Please leave." She says, cutting the nun off in full flow.

"Excuse me, Isobel, sweetie?"

"I asked you to leave. Rose is my daughter, and _no one_ is going to take her away."

The Mother Superior sits back, eyebrow raised, all warmth and softness gone from her round face, "Would you please stop being so selfishly dramatic for five minutes? You cannot keep this child. You don't even have a proper home, for goodness sakes!"

Isobel stands, straight and tall, hides her shaking hands behind her back. She hasn't been so angry in years, all fear or unease covered by a roaring, terrifying rage, "If she were unhappy: if she were sick or hungry or homeless, then I would consider sending her away from me for her own good. But my daughter is the happiest little soul I have ever set eyes on, and nothing will destroy that. She needs her mother."

"She needs a family and a home." The Mother Superior stands with her, and they stand face-to-face, ready for war.

"And what makes you think I can't provide that?"

"You are here in this house on a _technicality_," the snake-woman spits, "And don't you try to convince me that you can provide anything better on your own. I know your history, honey, and Rose deserves better than that."

"You should leave, now." Isobel's voice is calm, cold, murderous anger hidden under thin civility.

The Mother Superior sweeps out with a small, cold smirk.

Isobel collapses onto the couch, head in her hands, and sobs for hours. She cries for her baby, fatherless and trapped in a monster's lair.

She cries for her only friend, her chosen sister, who follows such an evil soul with a blithely innocent smile and a song in her pure and sweet little heart..

But most of all, she cries for herself: for the loneliness carving a permanent hole in her chest, and the trembling fear that never leaves her bones. For the knowledge that no one could ever truly care for her, the rejected single mother, the failed nun, the daughter who ran from her childhood home eight years ago, and hasn't stopped for breath since.

* * *

Gold tries to stay out of her way.

He's been scuppered by his own bargaining, lead himself into this trap, and now he's paying the price. He doesn't want to look at her, silly wretched little thing, nor hear her undeserved small one crying in the night.

He was supposed to take the baby far away, find it a new and loving home, as he had in the old days.

At the very least, he should have been able to leave it with social services.

Instead, he has a new mother and her newborn daughter living in his home, because that was the bargain he made, and to rip it up would be unthinkable.

You don't want to piss off magic: you make your bed, and then you bloody well sleep in it.

Even if the bed is all of fifteen yards from a woman who hates you, and the baby she shouldn't even know.

And oh, how she hates him. He can see it in her eyes, whenever she looks at him, whenever they bump into each other in the hallway or try to make breakfast at the same time.

Eventually, she takes to making two rounds of toast and leaving the second – usually blackened and burnt, and reeking of passive aggression – on the dining room table for him. She'd rather make his breakfast for him like a kitchen maid than have to look him in the eye.

Once upon a time, he saved her and her child from an unspeakable life.

He knew the Marchlands, her father's old realm. He knew of their fanatic religious cults, their devotion to strict rules and social order. Women were seen and not heard, and cast out if a breath of scandal touched their name.

Her father would have taken the baby and drowned it, or at best given it to a peasant family far from home. He would have left his daughter alone in that tower to rot forever.

But she doesn't know that, and so Isobel French haunts his home like a malevolent spirit.

He never sees the baby. The few times Isobel is without her daughter, the room is locked. She's afraid he'll come and spirit her away, perhaps leave a changeling child in her place.

And if wishing made it so…

But where Rose goes, Isobel goes: such were the terms of this accidental bargain.

They don't speak to each other. He goes out at eight sharp every morning, before she rises, and comes back at eight in the evening, by which time she's in her room for the night.

If he sees her, he nods his head and smiles, and she looks as if she's about to make the old sign against evil, as if she'll cross her chest and clutch her crucifix, like the nun she almost became.

Until the night when Rose is loud, wailing through the house, and Gold is woken from his sleep.

Amazingly, this hasn't happened before. In the two months since Isobel moved in, she's been good about keeping the child quiet, taking her out onto the terrace if needs be in order to keep from disturbing him.

Gold has even taken to sleeping in the apartment above the shop, sometimes, on nights when a storm is predicted or heavy winds that will wake the child.

No need to force a confrontation, after all.

But tonight the storm struck without warning, and the crying continues unabated, and Gold can't stand it anymore.

He might be stuck with these two for the next eighteen years, for all he knows, because magic is as magic does and it's been trying to spite him for decades. Isobel is going to have to accept sooner or later that the kid can cry without him doing something drastic.

She'll have to accept that his intentions were good, deep down, underneath all the tricks and deals and dark magic.

So he pulls his dressing gown around himself and grabs his cane, and crosses the house to Isobel and Rose's room. The door is open before him for the first time since she moved in, and he sees her, silhouetted against the window by the streetlight outside, watching the rainfall and holding her daughter.

And a tiny flake of the anger he harbours toward her falls away: because she's singing some soft lullaby, and holding Rose as his wife held Bae, and maybe this woman barely out of childhood has more love in her than he'd thought.

"Is there a problem, dear?" Rose is still crying, and she's like an air-raid siren.

Isobel spins, and for a moment there's a flash of pure terror across her face and his stomach twists, just a little bit, out of something that's not quite guilt. He doesn't want her to fear him, not really, not that much. From the looks of things out in the town, the rumblings he hears, he's not the one she should be afraid of: the baby's father is.

"She… she won't settle." She says, after a moment, and her voice is quiet and timid but still strong.

"She's fed and changed, I assume?" he takes a few more steps inside, and she stands her ground. She's a brave thing, little Isobel.

"Yes. I think it's the storm: she doesn't like the thunder." She's holding the child to her breast, and Gold is worried she might clutch too tightly, smother her daughter in trying to protect her.

"I'm not going to take her," he says, quietly, "Rose is yours: if I could have whisked her away, I would have done it by now."

"You'll keep trying," Isobel shakes her head, and her voice starts to waver. The poor girl is so terrified, so lost, her rabbit heart beating too fast in her chest.

"No. There is nothing I can do to separate you: your presence in my home is proof of that."

He scrutinises her face, and is more than a little pleased when she relaxes a little, allows Rose's face to peep out from her chest, eyes squeezed shut as she whimpers. "Take her downstairs and put one of the children's channels on the television: they play through the night and it should soothe her."

Then he turns and limps back to bed.

* * *

The next morning, Isobel decides it's time to earn her keep.

Because she's read the contract a hundred times, and physically he could have taken Rose by force the night before and didn't. He can't separate them: some force, legal or otherwise, prevents him.

And strange as it seems, she doesn't entirely hate this arrangement. Her host is frightening, no doubt about it, but he's also absent most of the time, and the house is beautiful. And she knows the rules here, at least. She stays on her side and he stays on his.

Mr Gold harbours no personal dislike of her, no reason to harm her or allow someone else to. She wouldn't have been able to say the same had she ended up back at her father's house, or worse, shacked back up with George.

She's somewhat safe, here, and while her mind wants to be scared, two months of calm and peace have released some of the tension in her chest.

She could be here a while, and it is time she started settling in.

So she props Rose up on an armchair, allowing her little arms and legs to kick freely, and starts to clean.

And soon discovers something: the man is a cleaner's worst nightmare. She used to watch daytime TV, back when she was living with George and unemployed, and she's seen _Hoarders_. She's amazed that the sheer mass of Gold's stuff hasn't swallowed him whole.

But she cleans, one room at a time, and goes to bed feeling better than she has since she left the convent.

She prays as she does it, little prayers like spells for good health, for Rose's happiness, for freedom from whatever prison she now finds herself in.

It's a warm little prison, though, with a beautiful garden and an open front door. Sometimes she goes for walks with Rose, and knows that she has nothing to fear from the world outside. This bolthole is absurdly homey, for the lair of a dragon.

Gold doesn't comment on her work: that would require speech.

After their midnight meeting during the thunderstorm, he's gone back to keeping his distance. Which Isobel appreciates, considering how terrifying he is, how angry she still is at him for putting her in this situation.

Although at least half of that anger is claimed by the Mother Superior.

She doesn't _want_ to think badly of the women who took her in, who fed her and gave her a bed, who looked after her even when she was pregnant out of wedlock, when she was scared and completely alone in the world.

But the woman forged her signature and took payment for a baby, a baby she had never met, who was no blood of hers. A child who needed a family, traded away like cattle.

Even without that sickening betrayal, it was she who was so adamant that Isobel not be allowed to keep her baby if she stayed with the nuns.

Astrid had said she wouldn't have minded having a baby around, as did Sister Mira and Sister Tatiana. It was the Mother Superior who put her foot down, who signed away Rose's future without a second thought.

Mr Gold is a heartless bastard, but at least he'd never asked her to trust him.

But he doesn't mention her cleaning, and she makes sure she's still in her room, door closed, reading or playing with Rose by the time he gets home.

It's only when she's walking through the hallway outside the living room, late at night, trying to slip into the kitchen to get something to eat, that she says anything at all.

They haven't spoken a word beyond the occasional 'good morning' since the night of the storm, three weeks ago. But she's tired, and hungry, and her brain isn't firing on all cylinders, and Mr Gold is sat in his armchair with his shoes on, feet propped on her nice clean coffee table, and he's _not using a coaster_.

"I cleaned this room yesterday," she says, and her voice rings out in the darkness. Then she realises, belatedly, what she's done, and she wants to run back upstairs and hold her baby to her chest, and curl in the foetal position under the covers.

"Excuse me?" he looks so startled as he glances up from his book, as if she's just thrown something at him.

"I-" she gathers herself, takes a deep breath. She lives here too, through no design of her own, and she's going to stand her ground, "I cleaned in here yesterday, and you're messing it up again. I would appreciate it if you tried to keep things neat and tidy."

She's said her piece, and she half expects him to shout at her, or sit in awkward silence, or knock something over on purpose just to spite her.

But he just stares at her a moment, as if he can't quite work out who or what she is, and then nods, "I apologise, Miss French. I will be more careful in future."

And she nods, stiffly, and smiles at how difficult this all is, and then rushes off to grab a bag of cookies and sprint back to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

She smiled at him.

He can't comprehend why she would: they're not friends, not even acquaintances, and he didn't say anything amusing or profound.

But Isobel smiled at him, and oh, does she have a lovely smile.

He wouldn't mind seeing it more often, he thinks. Then he shakes his head, and resists the urge to bang it against a wall. Because one smile in the middle of the night is no reason to think that she might be willing to speak to him tomorrow.

But he still feels… hopeful.

He doesn't overanalyse it, passes it off as the knowledge that, if one is going to be stuck living with someone for a while, having them be a thundercloud dripping around the hallways is a little inconvenient. He'd like them to be civil, at least.

So the next day, he doesn't open the shop and stays home.

He has accounts to catch up on anyway: business has taken quite a spike since the Saviour came to town and things started moving again.

So he settles himself at the dining room table, and pretends not to notice when Isobel appears at 9am, bright and fresh as he's never seen her. She stops dead when she sees him.

"Good morning, dear, did you sleep well?"

And she's back to glaring at him, as if he's stepped over their invisible borderlines and is tap-dancing on her territory. Which, he supposes, he is. But they're adults, and this was his home first, and they're going to make peace: one way or the other.

"Yes, fine." She grinds out.

"Good. Did you want some breakfast? There's still some pancake batter in the kitchen."

He figures that if he just treats her like a friend and not an enemy, perhaps she'll respond in kind.

This woman traded away a child for freedom, but she also tricked him into trading herself in with the deal. He's not sure she wasn't a little bit clever, a little bit brave back in that tower room.

And here, now, she is willing to live with a man known only for his darkness, a stranger who is feared and loathed by everyone she knows, and does so without a moment's hesitation. Just to stay close to her daughter.

And he's a man who murdered and took on the darkest of all curses to save his son. He can understand desperation, and it's hard to remain angry, to maintain his disgust, when she hasn't left Rose's side for more than five minutes in near-on three months.

It's strange to see her now, with her arms empty, alone in the doorway.

So he smiles at her suspicious frown as she crosses to the kitchen, and watches through the doorway as she dips a finger in the batter and tastes it, as if it might be poisoned.

She hums as she cooks her breakfast, and he notes it down as another thing he didn't know about her before. Along with how she's a bit fussy about cleanliness, and how she's willing to tell him off if he's annoying her.

She comes and sits on the opposite end of the long wooden table, and keeps her eyes on her food.

"Did you have any plans for the day, Miss French?" he asks after a long stretch of silence.

She looks up, eyes wide and mouth full of pancakes, and swallows her food down in one large gulp; "I was going to take a walk, then start work on the study."

"Ah." He nods, smiles, "You don't have to clean if you don't want to, you know."

He doesn't know if he's going to offend her; the woman is covered in landmines and pitfalls. She frowns, and he can see ambivalence play across her lovely face, before she finally answers, "I know, I just wanted to help."

He takes that as a positive sign: she's trying to settle in, trying to feel at home. But he doesn't want her to feel like a prisoner or a servant, although she would have been in the old world. Rumpelstiltskin would have demanded that she clean the Dark Castle, and sleep in a dungeon.

But the game is different, in this new world, and Isobel is not a maid from a country village, and he is not a powerful sorcerer, and the old power dynamics cannot and should not be at work. Coexistence is the aim here.

"And your help is very much appreciated, I assure you. I was just making sure that you know it's not mandatory: this is your home."

He doesn't want her around. In principal, she is an unwelcome guest in this house, and he should be working overtime to trick her out of it, to throw her back to the wolves. He has to wonder what the Mother Superior would do, if he managed to circumvent the arrangement and cast this girl back out onto the streets.

The nun _sold a child_. Blame where blame is due, in this world, Isobel didn't make that choice.

And it's just so much harder, in this new human skin, to play the villain and dance on broken glass. It's harder to drown out the empathy he feels for her, one broken-hearted parent to another.

And her cleaning makes his home smell of pine-scented floor polish and lavender soap. It feels brighter, warmer and cheerier for a little care and attention: on a purely materialistic level, a level upon which he is in his element, this can be appreciated.

There is something about her that makes him want to be sweet, kind and comforting: everything he has always scorned and never been.

That's not true: he was all of those things before, when he was a powerless spinner without a penny to his name. The poor and downtrodden can afford to play nice.

Isobel almost makes him wish he were that person again.

And with that realisation, he looks back down at his work, and tries to forget the glimpse of a second smile he drew from her, the sight of something resembling _life _appearing in her eyes.

They don't mention it again; they don't even see each other for the rest of the day. She takes Rose out on a long walk, and he buries himself in his work, and the world spins the same as it always has.

But the next morning she's up earlier, and they eat breakfast together, and she even brings Rose down with her, seating her on the table in a ridiculous little chair she found somewhere. The child coos and laughs as her mother feeds her, and even smiles at Gold when he risks a look, flashes a grin.

Isobel glances between the two of them, frowning, and for a moment he believes that she'll take her daughter back to their room, that their progress will be undone.

The child is sacrosanct, the one and only thing Isobel can truly cling to, and call her own. If anything were to send her scurrying back to her room, ears down and heart racing, it would be the implication that he had any interest in her daughter at all.

Even just because the baby's smiling anyway, and it's the purest thing he's seen in a long while; just because there isn't a jaded, bitter adult on the planet who can resist such joy.

He holds his breath, and waits for an accusation.

But then she smiles, and goes back to fussing over her baby, and he breathes a little sigh of relief.

* * *

She invites Astrid over, to help her with the garage. She's finished most of the house in the past month, and now it's time to start on the massive mess he's left in his storage unit in the back yard.

She's set herself to this task, and when Isobel is set on something she intends to see it through.

But she also hasn't seen Astrid in over a week, and she's desperate for some female company. Gold is surprisingly sweet when they eat breakfast together, each and every morning, and has begun to inquire about her day when they bump into each other in the afternoons and evenings sometimes, but it's nothing close to real conversation.

She'd like it to be: she doesn't deny that.

Gold is a dragon but his smile is warm, and he hasn't done a thing to hurt her in the three months since she moved in.

Astrid worries her lips when Isobel tells her this, as they begin to sort through the absurd mess he's left behind. "He was going to sell a _child_, Isobel."

"I never said he was a good man. I said I wanted to get to know him better. I mean… I _live_ with the man, Astrid."

"Yeah, but you didn't exactly choose to."

"I didn't choose to get pregnant, either," she points out, as they lift a heavy rug between them and throw it out on the grass, causing a massive dust cloud to rise into the air, "But I don't regret that."

"I guess…" Astrid still looks nervous, and she glances down at Rose where she's sat in her little seat on the grass, asleep, "I don't know. People aren't exactly nice about him around town."

"The Mother Superior was going to let him take Rose away," Isobel injects some firmness into her tone, "So how bad can he actually be?"

That soothes Astrid a little, the summoning of her Superior's influence. Isobel never told her about the Mother Superior's visit the week after she arrived, and didn't intend to. Nothing could hurt her friend more than the idea that the woman she'd followed for her entire adult life could be anything less than pure and holy light.

Isobel is a realist, and she's seen darker things than nuns with ulterior motives. The Mother Superior's grin in the hospital flashes into her memory. It wasn't a gentle, reassuring smile; it was a smirk of triumph, a predatory flash of teeth.

But Astrid is her sweet, innocent, chosen sister, and she has a beautifully soft, safe little world. Isobel's world has never been soft, never been safe, and she'd be a monster for dragging someone new into it.

Astrid's world couldn't cope with the concept of morally corrupt abbess and an almost chivalrous loan shark.

So Isobel just smiles, and hides her fear behind her eyes, and turns back to the garage.

There was something underneath the rug that completely flummoxes her. "Is that… a spinning wheel?"

"Yeah…" Astrid frowns and stares at it a moment, "Maybe he had an elderly relative?"

"What? Old Grandma Gold?" Isobel can't help but giggle at the idea of Gold having any kind of family, particularly an ancient and cranky grandmother.

"It could have happened!" Astrid protests, "Or maybe he just… makes his own clothes? Likes to spin thread to strangle people with…"

Isobel smacks her friend's arm absently, and then shakes her head "His suits are too well-tailored for him to make them himself." She shrugs, "Old family heirloom?"

"Maybe it's valuable; something for the shop?" Astrid's wandered off inside the garage, started hauling out stacks of old books. Isobel's still hung up on that spinning wheel: she gives it a go, pushes the wheel around and watches it spin.

There's something hypnotic about the motion, soothing and rhythmic.

She moves it carefully out of her way and puts it under a tarpaulin to keep it dry. She kneels, checks on Rose's sleeping little form, as she's learnt to do at least every ten minutes whenever she's doing anything at all.

She's heard of young mothers being tired all the time from their new children: there's something to be said for being an unemployed houseguest, in a house filled with everything anyone could need in the world. And it helps that her daughter is a good-natured and quiet child.

This is a baby who has a smile even for Mr Gold, whose teeth are dragon-fangs.

Isobel loves her so much she feels she might die from it.

* * *

Gold enjoys Storybrooke.

Regina's little grey nightmare of a town is terrified of him, but they don't know why. Back in the old world, everyone knew who he was, and everyone had a different reaction. Here, it's different. Here, he feels he wears an aura of darkness, or foreboding, without anyone being able to properly _see_ it.

Regina probably designed it that way to force him to be forever alone.

That's always been her problem: she assumes that everyone else feels exactly the way she does. Regina's deepest, darkest fear is loneliness, and therefore her enemies must be alone also.

That was why she was insistent upon dragging a child into her mess: she couldn't bear the solitude of victory any longer.

But Gold enjoys his infamy, his notoriety. Loneliness is a small price to pay for the raw fear on the waitress' face when he enters Granny's Diner, and smiles like he's just killed somebody.

He's got a twisted sense of humour, but it amuses him.

He leaves with his lunch, ready to go back and eat in the shop, when something catches his eye: a tall man, dark haired and hulking, in a rather heated argument with a startlingly familiar brunette.

And he wants to just walk on past.

Isobel can handle her own affairs, and it's healthy for her to do so. He's not her father, nor her husband, she is no blood of his to keep and protect. She is capable of dealing with her own problems in her own way, and he knows her well enough by now to know she'd rather do so.

She doesn't trust a soul in the world. If she wanted his help, she would ask for it.

So he'd like just walk on past, and enquire politely about it at breakfast the next morning.

Except for the fact that she's holding Rose, and the man is looming over both of them, all brutish menace and intimidation, and things like this are _not acceptable_.

Through unbreakable bonds of blood-agreements and magic ties, that baby is as much his to protect as she is her mother's. If demons and twisted souls come to cause her harm, it will be on his head.

So he walks over to them, all casual and calm, and smiles his darkest smile, and says as pleasantly as he can, "Is something the matter, Miss French?"

She stares at him in shock, but there's something behind her eyes, something softer and sweeter, almost like relief. "Um, no, Mr Gold. It's all okay. George was just leaving." She shoots a look at the man, as if he's no more than an insect obsessed with her floral-scented hair, and the intent is obvious: she wants him gone.

"The hell I am!" the man, George, is glancing between the two of them with unconcealed anger and confusion, "What the fuck is this, Is? I don't see you for a year and you show up with a fucking _baby_?"

"You didn't see me because I didn't want to be seen."

"The kid is as much mine as yours, Is. You know that: you can't fucking keep her from me."

"George," she's a picture of calm exasperation, but she holds Rose as if the combined armies of all seven Hells stand before them, armed to the teeth and ready to cut and slash and burn, "Back off. You don't really want her, so why have the fight?"

"You can't keep her from me." He repeats, and he's getting far too close to the child, and Gold won't stand and watch this.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid she can." He thrust his cane between the pair, and pushes George back. The man looks at him with a look of pure shock: he is entirely unable to believe he might be challenged. Gold feels a stab of sympathy for Isobel: if this is her daughter's father, then what kind of life must the poor girl have lead?

"Back the fuck off, grandpa." And oh, the stupid boy is trying to be _threatening_.

Isobel is shaking. She's a warrior child, and she's made of old leather and iron and she's one of the strongest people he's ever known. And she'll come back from this; she's the kind of person who bounces back harder. That doesn't change the fact that this oafish peasant boy made her tremble in fear, and made Rose whimper in her mama's arms.

Gold wants to become Rumpelstiltskin again, just so he can turn him into a toad.

But he can't, because Regina's best avoided by playing the innocent, and people would stare, and Isobel might be a little disturbed watching her housemate turn her former paramour into a wart-covered amphibian.

So he settles for a menacing smile with all his teeth, one that says _back off boy, you don't know what you're messing with_, and pushes him further back with the cane.

And that should be the end of it.

Except for the fact that Rose is crying properly, now, and Isobel is rocking her, trying to soothe her, and people are staring and George can't just walk away and leave it be.

He spits at Isobel's feet, and mutters, "Fucking whore. I'll kill you for this."

And Gold holds back, because he won't let that happen, and that constitutes a threat, and he has the Sheriff's office on speed dial.

Isobel looks up at George, with fire in her eyes and strength in her shoulders, and doesn't concede an inch of ground, "Say that one more time in front of my daughter, and you'll regret it," she murmurs, "Forever."

George's smirk turns to fury in a moment, and he slaps Isobel clean across the face. The ring on his finger leaves a line of blood along her cheekbone.

That's when Gold loses it.

Because somewhere it stopped being all about protecting what belongs to him. At some point he transformed into some faint and twisted approximation of a knight, defending his lady's honour. And no one has the right to harm a hair on her head: to do so is sin epitomised.

She is the woman-child who crouched in a tower, dirty, rail-thin and sickly, and still outsmarted an ancient and wicked demon. Under her beige cardigan and denim jeans and trembling fingers, she is the princess in battle armour who agreed to spend her days with a dragon to protect her only family: the baby in her arms.

And here this asshole stands, degrading her and causing her even an ounce of genuine fear, causing her _pain_, and Gold isn't willing to stand for that.

So he raises his cane, and brings it down on the bastard's thick, overly inflated head.

Isobel cries out in horror; Rose is wailing something fierce; and George is still standing, albeit clutching his head. Gold sees none of it. Until the brute is on the floor, bleeding and grovelling at Isobel's feet, the red mist will cover his eyes and the pain the bastard suffers will be_ legendary_.

George isn't worthy of breathing her _air_, but Gold can fix that.

He goes for the stomach next, winding him, then cracks it down across his back. The idiot's on the floor, groaning, and Gold raises his cane for one final strike, to smack the git into unconsciousness where he belongs, before someone grabs his weapon from behind and stops him.

But Isobel's off to his left, watching and rocking Rose in a kind of disbelieving stupor, blood trickling from the cut on her cheek.

It's the cold handcuffs behind his back, the firm and entirely pissed-off voice in his ear, that alert him to the bastard's real saviour. Sheriff Swan is reading Miranda rights in a shocked but steady tone, and Gold wonders what in seven _sodding_ hells got into him.


	4. Chapter 4

Isobel has to go to the Sheriff's office, to give a testimony. George is pressing charges – of course he is, he hasn't a sensible bone in his body – and she's a witness.

Rose stopped crying as soon as George was taken away and they were back home. She gurgled as Isobel bounced her in her arms, and fed until she was sleepy, and somewhere in the mix there was one brilliant moment where she beamed, and chased every worry in her mama's mind far away.

But now there are unlikely heroes to defend, and monsters to be slain, and Isobel has work to do.

So she calls Astrid, and she races over to look after Rose, greeting Isobel with a worried frown and a warm, wonderfully protective embrace.

Isobel watches her chosen sister rock her baby in her slim, careful hands, and wonders if she wasn't the wrong mother for this quiet sunshine child. Because Isobel has been a warrior, and a runaway, and homeless teenage wreck, and now she lives in a monster's home and scrubs floors.

Astrid has a warmth and an innocence in her eyes that only comes from a life where one can tell the good from the evil, can know the score every moment of the day, and be certain that the sun will rise in the morning.

Isobel can't help but wonder if that isn't the kind of life her daughter truly deserves.

But then Rose looks at her, smiles like the sun, laughs as her mama tickles her stomach, and Isobel knows that it cannot be true.

Rose is all she has in the world: if she lost her, she would truly become dust.

So she drops a kiss to her daughter's forehead, and smiles to her friend, and leaves for the Sheriff's office.

It's a little bit sweet, the way Gold looks up and smiles when she comes in. She's still not sure if she wants to kill him or kiss him breathless for what he did – and she's even less sure where _that_ thought came from – but it's still good to see he's okay.

"Isobel French?" Sheriff Swan comes out of her office, and smiles a little awkwardly.

"Yes, how can I help?"

"I just… could you answer a few questions for me? I'm just trying to sort out what happened this afternoon."

"Yeah, sure." Isobel shoots a smile at Gold, trying to reassure him: he looks profoundly wrong locked up in a jail cell.

For better or worse, he managed this afternoon to do what she's wanted to for the past two years and never could. And he shouldn't have, and she's pissed that he did, because these are her battles and she requested no cavalry charge. But that doesn't mean she doesn't recognise that he's behind bars because of her.

So she follows Emma into the office, and settles herself down. Emma's watching her carefully, but her smile is warm and friendly, "So… what happened?"

"George Gaston was… he was threatening me. He said he was going to kill me… Mr Gold was trying to help."

"His help was kinda violent." The Sheriff notes, but Isobel can see that she's intrigued "You said he threatened you?"

"Yeah…"

"And why'd he do that?" she's frowning in sympathy; Isobel figures that – from all she's heard – this is probably a woman who will understand better than most.

"Because he's an abusive asshole, and I don't want him within a hundred miles of my daughter." Holding out and trying to hide things is only going to reflect worse on Gold. The truth is also his best defence.

"Abusive?" Emma looks a little startled, "What's he done before?"

"We were… we were together for a while. He didn't like other guys… you know, around me. He used to get kind of angry about it."

"Angry as in yelling?"

"Angry as in smashing things. I left when he decided to stop breaking crockery and start work on my face."

And Emma's eyes are wide and honest and so, so sad for her, and Isobel wants to cry like she hasn't since she left the convent, like she hasn't since Rose brought a shred of hope back into her world.

But she has a knight in mottled, rotting armor to save, so she steels herself and looks the Sheriff in the eye, "He's the father, though. He's Rose's dad."

"Oh…" Emma's surprised frown is unexpected, "I thought…" she looks over at Mr Gold, where he sits in his cell with his head in his hands.

And absurdly, Isobel starts to laugh, "No. Oh, really, really no! No, he's… he's not the father. We're not together. No way. No."

That was a few too many denials. Right about now, if she were here, Astrid would be smirking, her eyebrows raised, having worked out Isobel's entire thought process with a single look.

But the Sheriff is just frowning in confusion, and noticed nothing.

"Then why… you guys live together, right? According to Graham's old files…" a shadow flits across her pretty face, and Isobel makes a note to ask someone what the story was there. All she knows is that the old sheriff died, and his deputy won the election and took over his job.

That looked like more than the pain of a dead colleague.

But this is about the mess that is _her_ life, not the Sheriff's, so she keeps her questions to herself, "Yes. I mean, we share a house, but he's…" she doesn't want to explain the deal, knows the Sheriff's type. She'll come in and try to fix things and only make things worse. Isobel has the contract back at the house, locked away in her desk drawer, and she knows the terms by heart.

She knows where she stands here. Adding new elements - concerned law enforcement, who will be followed by the mayor, who'll definitely drag her father into this and she _cannot go back_ to that life – will only muddy the waters.

Isobel likes her waters clear; she chooses her words carefully, selecting her stepping-stones with caution as she always has.

"He's trying to help us." She finishes, finally. And it's not a lie, not really, not today when he languishes in prison for crimes committed in the name of her safety. "He saw that we were homeless, and stepped in to help."

Emma's frowning, suspicion writ large on her features, and Isobel can't help but feel a pang of solidarity: the expression seems all too natural there, and Isobel can relate.

"Free of charge?" the Sheriff asks, "That doesn't sound like Mr Gold."

And no, it doesn't, because it isn't true. Her baby was the price, not the reason for the bargain, and had she had the choice she would have simply run far and fast, and carried Rose in her arms the whole way.

It was only a certain amount of selective wordplay on some nameless lawyer's part that lead to this circumstance, this twist of fate that no-one asked for. But the Sheriff can't know that, or there'll be some new crime, some new sentence that will take her home away again, so she lies on the spot and wills it to ring true.

"Of course not. I'm his housekeeper, now. Room and board for me and Rose, and in return I cook and clean."

And in that moment, she's beaming like the sun, like Rose when she's given a new teddy bear or sees Gold across the room, pulling a face he doesn't think her mama sees.

Because she's going to write a new deal, and have him sign it, and cut through every weird and twisted thread in their relationship to make the world a simpler place to be. A new deal that will ensure forever that she'll never have to run again, that her rabbit days are over and done with for good.

And the Sheriff doesn't understand, but she's smiling too, and the conversation turns back to the afternoon's incidents and Isobel smiles and smiles, recalling the day's heroics with her head held high.

* * *

Gold cannot understand the smile on Isobel's face when she comes out of the office, and crosses the room to him.

She never smiles past 10am. Ever. Not at him, at any rate.

Breakfast is their armistice, their time of peace, when she smiles and he tries desperately to make her laugh, and they forget the complexities of their arrangement, her discomfort at her circumstances.

But now she's smiling, and it's for him, and he would trade whole cities just to keep her this way.

"Everything okay, dear?" he maintains his composure, even though he wants to gather her in his arms and kiss the cut on her cheek under its Band-Aid.

It's the Sheriff who answers, "She says you did it to defend her. Is that true?"

"The boy was being insolent."

"If he was honestly threatening, then there's something to be done. But you have to be honest with me."

She's up at the bars, now, with Isobel behind her, urging him to spill the whole truth and nothing but. And he's coming to see that he will do most things simply because she asks, with or without a 'please' attached, so he looks at the Sheriff and says, "He said he'd kill Miss French, and did so in front of their daughter. He also used some rather foul language."

"And you think he poses a credible threat? He wasn't just posturing?"

"I think the boy himself believes the threat is genuine, yes. But I assure you, Sheriff Swan, Miss French is quite safe with me."

"Hmm," the Sheriff doesn't look too convinced: she seems uneasy, and he supposes she has good reason to. He isn't the first person in town one would trust with the care of a single mother and her newborn baby. The Sheriff turns to Isobel, frowning, "Are you sure?" she murmurs, as if Gold isn't sat right there and can hear every word, "I mean, there are other places you could stay…"

A shock of fear – entirely surprising, considering everything – runs down Gold's spine. She could tell the Sheriff everything, and Emma's cold eyes would turn to him, and he'd be alone in his house once more.

He should want that.

He's a man who's always loved his privacy, his solitude. And he certainly didn't ask for this arrangement, for Isobel and her tiny daughter to take over his home.

He didn't ask for his rooms to be fresh, clean and bright, or for his clothes to suddenly smell of peach fabric softener.

But they are, and they do, and he's found he likes it that way.

The company isn't bad either. But he's not going near those thoughts, not yet, not after what happened this afternoon. But he can admit that he likes having someone else in the house, and that Rose can be adorable when she's not wailing about something.

Bur Isobel is smiling, and shaking her head and – oh, Gods – her hand is wrapped around one of the bars, as if she's stood beside him. As if they're friends.

Emma does let him go, eventually, after Leroy's brought in again and needs his cell, and the hospital calls and says George is awake and ready for questioning, and Emma admits – a little reluctantly – that she doesn't believe he'll hurt someone between the office and his home.

He has to think that Isobel's presence must have helped: the woman practically radiates trustworthiness and truth.

It helps that she's wounded, that she can show that George threw the first punch.

Gold's reaction might have been a little excessive: he'll admit that in hindsight. But he doesn't regret a single blow he landed, or a single injury he caused. A whole body full of bruises on George Gaston pales in comparison to the small cut to Isobel French's cheekbone.

They get home, and he tries not to enjoy the surprise and fear on Isobel's little nun friend's face when they arrive side-by-side.

"Hey, Is, how did it go?" she asks, as she hands the baby back to her mother. Isobel's body instinctively curls to cradle the child as she goes to the kitchen to find a bottle, and Gold catches himself looking at the pair of them with a fondness he should not be feeling.

He needs to con someone out of a priceless family heirloom, or evict a hapless resident, something malevolent and pointlessly evil. He's feeling entirely too human these days.

The nun is left in the hallway, watching him with narrowed eyes, and he supposes she's trying to look fierce.

"Something on your mind, dear?"

"I hope you caused him some kind of irreparable damage." Sister Astrid almost growls, and Gold feels a surprised smile forming on his face.

"Me too." He leans in, conspiratorially, and Astrid nods.

"Good." She raises her voice, "I'm going, Is!" Isobel calls a quick goodbye and a thank you from the kitchen as the nun slips out of the door.

Gold is tempted – oh, so very tempted – to capitalise on what seems an uncharacteristic good mood in Isobel, and go and join her in the kitchen. But he figures the girl is probably in shock, and not quite herself, and it feels too much like taking advantage.

So he disappears into his study, and starts to flick through his law journals, trying to find the defence he needs to walk away from this whole George Gaston affair without paying the bastard a cent in compensation.

He's there until late in the night, flicking through the books, his attention waning with every passing hour.

He's ready to go to bed, to sleep until late tomorrow morning and put the day's events behind him, when a shaft of light is thrown across the floor. The door opens, and Isobel stands in the doorway, nervously chewing her lip.

"Everything alright, Miss French?"

"Yeah, I guess. I just… today was awful, wasn't it?"

And he'd been right, she'd been in shock since the incident with Gaston, and now she was seeing clearly again. And she'd hate him, of course she would: he'd beaten the father of her child into near-unconsciousness right in front of her.

But at least she comes inside, and settles herself in the chair opposite him, and isn't back to locking herself away in her room all evening.

"Today wasn't an easy one, no." He agrees, watching her carefully. She's shaking, but she's trying not to show it, and she's staring at her hands, refusing to look him in the eye.

He wonders if she'd feel more comfortable with her daughter in her arms: the pair are inseparable, and she seems almost naked sitting there alone.

"We need to talk." She takes a deep breath, and he can see she probably has a whole speech prepared inside her mind, "I just… I need to thank you for what you did today. Even though you shouldn't have done it. Even though it was my fault, and my battle to fight."

"Some monsters you can't defeat without some help."

"I suppose…" she's back to chewing her lip, nervous energy radiating from her, although she sits so still in her chair, "I just… I don't want you to be one of them."

And now she's looking at him, pale blue eyes deep and so very sad, so scared and anxious, and he's so surprised that he can barely move.

He has no idea what to say to that.

"I mean, I look at today, and George was being so horrible, and I wanted to _kill_ him… but he's never beaten anyone up on the street."

"I'm sorry for that," he says, even though he's not sorry for any pain he caused the stupid boy, even though he'd have happily continued. He is sorry for causing her distress, though. For some reason, distressing Isobel seems like a cardinal sin.

"I turn men into monsters." She mutters, and he wonders if he was supposed to hear that, "They don't hurt people until I come along. Evil isn't born, it's made."

And oh, she truly _believes_ that, doesn't she. She thinks his actions are somehow her fault, blames herself for George's hatred.

There is something deeply wrong with a world where this phoenix child could even _begin_ to even form that thought. But then, it goes without saying that there is something wrong in Storybrooke.

It doesn't stop the anger from racing through him.

"If I ever hear you say that again," he says, feeling the repressed rage spilling through his tone and unable to do a damn thing to stop it, "Then I will have to do something drastic."

"I'm sorry?" She looks entirely stunned, but she's staring at him with a kind of bare and desperate hope, clinging to his words as burning lifelines.

"I don't know what he did to you – and I'm not asking, because I don't think you want to tell me – but never, _ever_ think that a single _moment_ of it was your fault."

She starts to try to say something, offer some self-loathing protest or recrimination, and he cuts her off before she can do any such thing. One more word from her on the subject, and his resolve to sit still will break. "What George Gaston did today was monstrous: it was also his choice. Just as it was my choice to break his stupid, gurning face in."

And, reluctantly, she lets out a small, almost tearful chuckle.

He smiles, encouraged, "He threatened a _child_, Isobel," he continues, quietly, slipping in a use of her first name and hoping she won't notice, "I might be a monster, you can think that of me if you wish, but know that I would never stoop that low."

Her eyes gain a little more warmth, more life, as she smiles in a way that breaks his cold, dead heart and says, "You're not a monster. You're not in any way an angel, but you're not a monster."

He feels his chest squeeze, a lightness between his shoulder blades that feels a little like hope, like a love he hasn't felt in centuries.

"There was something else, too." She says, and pulls out a sheet of bright white paper he hadn't noticed before.

"Oh, and what was that, dear?" he injects some calm into his tone, tries to move them past the heavy depth of their previous topic.

"A new deal."

"And what does Depression-era economic policy have to do with this?" he teases, and a little more light reaches her eyes.

"No, you know what I mean: a new deal for _us_."

"Ah."

"Because Rose… this is her home now, you know? And I can't risk anything dragging us back to George or… or my dad. So we need something simpler, something stronger to keep us… here."

He doesn't want to feel the warmth that rushes through him at the word 'home'. But he does, and it's wonderful, and he hopes that she will always feel that way. The house would feel a little wrong, now, without her teacup on the drainer, without the residue of Rose's talcum powder in the bathroom, or the floral scent of Isobel's hair wafting through the air.

"Alright, what did you have in mind?"

"Here." she thrusts the paper toward him, and he takes it, scanning it quickly for deceptions and pitfalls.

A simple employment contract: cookery and general housekeeping in return for room and board.

It was the perfect cover for their subtler, more permanent magical deal, and he couldn't help the admiration and pride he felt that she'd come up with and written this herself.

"This seems… fair, yes. Although your cooking skills seem a little inadequate, dear." He teases, to hide the immense joy flooding his soul.

"I'm a good cook when I'm not being a passive-aggressive bitch." She says, with a wide smile."

"Prove it: make a decent full English tomorrow, and I'll sign this thing."

"Deal." She holds her hand out, and he shakes it. Her skin is smooth and soft, and the warmth radiates from his hand up his arm, infuses his whole being. Then she moves, and their contact breaks, and the moment is over.

"Now, get yourself to bed, dear," he stands, and she follows suit almost automatically, "Get some rest: God knows you deserve it."

He's completely thrown off-balance, unsure of how at all to react when she brings her arms up, and wraps them around his shoulders for just a moment, in the most cautious embrace he's ever felt.

It's been decades since someone touched him without malice, beyond more than a handshake.

Very slowly, carefully, he brings his arms to circle her waist, lightly enough that she can break away and run any time she wants to.

She sighs into his shoulder, rests her head there for a long moment, and he wishes she'd never let go. There's such a weariness in that sigh, a tiredness that surpasses anything a girl of barely twenty-five years should feel.

Then she lets go, and gives him an almost embarrassed little smile, and walks away.


	5. Chapter 5

Two weeks into their new arrangement, Isobel is woken in the middle of the night by an almighty crash, which echoes through the house and has her bolted upright in her bed.

Rose is awake, screaming as loudly as her tiny little lungs can manage, and Isobel hurries to her side to gather her in her arms, tries to soothe her, rocking her slowly and whispering reassurances in her ear.

But Rose is a perceptive child, and she can feel the trembling tension in her mama's limbs, the sense the fear in her voice. She wails for two or three minutes before Isobel's heart stops racing, before she relaxes enough to convince her daughter that everything really is alright, that she can go back to sleep now.

Isobel is relieved when she can settle Rose back in her crib, still whimpering a little but at nowhere near full-throttle, and turn her attention to the source of the noise that woke them in the first place.

She grabs the largest book she has, some kind of encyclopaedia, to use as a weapon as she creeps down the stairs.

She's comforted, when her slipper-clad feet hit the floor of the hallway, to hear someone cursing violently in a familiar Scottish accent: if Mr Gold is around, and swearing, and not unconscious on a floor someplace, then there is less reason to be scared.

She's not sure at what point she stopped considering him a threat unto himself.

Probably about the time she looked a real monster in the eye, and he was right by her side, defending her to the last.

She enters the front room, and understands immediately what caused the commotion. There's a brick lying in the centre of the floor, and the rug is littered with glittering shards of shattered glass.

And there's Gold, a dark figure against the streetlight blaring through the broken window, his face like thunder.

"What _happened_?" she gasps, even though the answer is obvious.

"Someone decided to take their frustrations out on the double-glazing." He replies, fury evident in his tone, but it's not directed at her.

In that moment, Isobel feels sorry for whomever it was who threw the brick.

Even stood in a ruined living room, in the dead of a Thursday night, in his pyjamas, Mr Gold still radiates the ability to reduce any person he chooses to a pile of ashes, with just a look and a harsh word.

Which used to terrify her, but now is comforting: because she knows that that power is on her side, that she is counted as a friend rather than an enemy.

He turns to properly face her, and a perplexed frown replaces the anger for a moment, "Why are you holding the _American Encyclopaedia of Birds_?"

"Oh, um…" she smiles, a little ashamed of herself, "I thought we were being robbed."

"And that was your weapon of choice?" he's mocking her, and she should be annoyed, but the laughter in his eyes is infectious. He crosses the room, picking his way across the broken glass, to stand close enough that she can see the details of his face.

"Yes!" she protests, but she's trying not to giggle, "It was the heaviest thing close to hand."

"Dearie, my house is full of heavy, sharp things perfect for murdering trespassers. Why ever did you choose a _book_?"

She doesn't answer that, another thought having sprung into her head, "Oh, shit, you're right. We're going to have to do so much baby-proofing before Rose learns to crawl."

She's sure she imagined the soft, tender, almost _mournful_ look in his eyes at that. Because it's gone in a moment, and he's shaking his head, "Oh, no dear, _you'll_ have to baby-proof. I don't do anything that involves my arse and the floor."

He gestures to his bad leg, and she nods, smiling, "Oh, yeah, sorry. You could still hide things like knives and spinning wheels."

He goes completely still, and she wonders what she's said wrong.

"You know, because her name is Rose and… sleeping beauty? The spinning wheel in the garage?" she shakes her head, "Man, have you read a single fairy tale in your entire _life_?"

She doesn't understand his little smile, the shake of his head, but she figures she probably doesn't want to know, "I don't expect baby Rose will be venturing to the shed anytime soon, do you?" he raises an eyebrow.

"No, I suppose not."

"Well then, I suppose she's safe from Evil Queens and curses for the time being." He says, as he brushes past her to go back to bed, "And by the way, Sleeping Beauty had it coming."

She spins, frowning despite her smile, "How do you figure?"

He turns at the doorway, gives that amused little half-smile she's come to equate with his wicked sense of humour, "She was warned. In fact, _someone_ tried to warn her several times. Stupid girl couldn't find it in her to stay away from a spindle for _one day_?" he shrugs, "She deserved everything she got."

And she laughs, because for some reason it's a little bit hilarious, and her laughter echoes through the house, and follows him up the stairs.

* * *

He fell asleep on the couch.

He's never done that.

But last night there was a thunderstorm, and Rose was inconsolable, and he'd ended up on this very sofa next to Isobel with the Nickelodeon channel going through the night, waiting for the storm to pass.

It wasn't like he could have slept through that lot anyway.

It had nothing to do with enjoying her proximity, or the close presence of a child who did – admittedly – calm a little when her mama passed her to him.

It's not at all charming or wonderful or heart-warming how baby Rose has taken to him. Because Gold's heart is cold and hard and cast in stone, so nothing can warm it.

Certainly not a child that isn't even his, and her mother who spent the first three months of their relationship hating his guts.

He'd made them popcorn, because Isobel's stomach had rumbled and Rose was unimpressed, and it hadn't been the worst night of his life. He hadn't been _unhappy_.

But still, last night had been tiring, and Rose at full volume is at least as loud as Bae was at her age, and now he's catching up on some rest. Accidentally, on the sofa, where he knows he'll have a painfully stiff spine and leg when he wakes.

He's awoken by a chirruping voice in his ear, and a sudden change in his balance on the couch, and he looks up blearily to see Isobel's face beaming at him, and cradling a – blissfully – _sleeping _baby in her other arm. She's settled back, relaxed and cross-legged, tired but contented.

He doesn't know what to say.

Until a few weeks ago, they had an hour each day when they sat in the dining room and talked as friends.

No more, no less.

But an evening in his study, with truth and deals and moonlight, had broken their glacier.

And an unknown midnight assailant – who Gold is closing in on, after a week of trying to leave it be – had brought them to the point of alliance.

And now she cooks their breakfast, and he stays up with her on the rare nights when Rose can't sleep and the house is full of crying, and he hasn't called her 'Miss French' in weeks.

And now it's evening, and dark outside, and the light inside is soft and golden, and she's _smiling_ at him. _On purpose_, and with her daughter in her arms, and no fear that he might spirit her away in a moment.

He just has to take stock of that for a moment.

His heart beats, and for the first time in eternity it feels healthy and warm and _human_.

"Your hair's sticking up funny." She says, and suddenly he's certain she's laughing at him. And for a man so heavily invested in his own pride, he feels strangely okay with that. At least if she's laughing at him, she's not crying or trembling or staring out into the night, alone and terrified.

He reaches behind his head and smooths the errant strands back into their proper place.

"It does that. I'm sure yours does too, after a nap."

"I just thought you should know," she smiles, "Thanks for staying up last night."

"Well, you're very welcome, dear. It was my pleasure."

"Why do you do that?" she asks, and he frowns in confusion.

"Do what?"

"Call me 'dear' all the time?"

"Well, what else should I call you?" he has a feeling this has a deeper meaning than random terms of endearment, but he's at a loss to see what it is.

"I have a name, you know. But at least 'dear' is better than 'Miss French'. I feel like an old maid when people call me that."

She's working herself around to something, he can tell, but that doesn't mean he has to make it easy for her, "Well, technically, you _are_ my maid." He says, and she waists no time in reaching over and smacking his arm with her free hand.

"But I'm not _old_. Which is more than I can say for some people."

"Oh, ouch." He clutches his chest, mouth open in a dramatic parody of shock, and she giggles.

"Just saying. Anyway, I just… could you do me a favour?"

"Depends what it is."

"Could you… God, this sounds stupid… but it feels important and names_ matter_, you know? And I just-"

"What's the favour?" her rambling is more adorable than it should be, and he feels the need to force her around to the point of this little diatribe.

"Could you… call me Belle?"

He goes still, wonders what she might have started remembering. She'll never forgive him if she remembers the past, remembers their deal and his willingness to steal her child.

He'd only done it to save the poor thing from inevitable shame and poverty.

He'd only done it to provoke her, to test her and see if she'd go through with it.

But she's chewing her lip, and she's still Isobel French, the downtrodden single mother from Storybrooke, Maine. There's no sign of a shamed, ruined and iron-strong knight's daughter in her eyes.

So he nods, and smiles and says, "Alright, if it'll make you happy, _Belle_." She smiles happily at her new name, and he feels it's acceptable to ask, "Why the change?"

"I don't know: something about fresh starts, maybe?"

"A new name, a new life?"

"I guess… I don't know: Isobel was my father's mother's name, and George has always called me 'Is', and everything's kind of… new and shiny, right now, you know? I have a daughter, and a job and a home. And friends. You know, happy, good-influence friends."

"Like the little nun who comes by sometimes?"

"Astrid? Yeah, she's probably the best influence a person could hope for." She sighs, glances at him sideways under her devastating eyelashes "And there's you."

His eyes widen, unsure of how to react.

He's a cold, hard, monster with an aged and rotting soul. He's not a good influence on _anybody_. But here she is, and she's stopped running, and she's smiling at him _on purpose_.

"Your old friends must have been river trolls, for that to be true."

"You make me brave," she smiles, "I never stood up to George before. I just ran and ran and ran, both to and from."

He's the coward who fled as fast as his little, hobbling feet could carry him from the Ogre War, whose wife left him because all he _did_ was run and hide. But somehow this brave, trembling phoenix-woman makes him want to believe that half of what she says is true.

"What did he do to you?" he asks, because the air is soft and she's relaxed and Rose is sleeping in her arms, and now, now he has to _know_.

And he hopes she lies, hopes she sugar-coats the truth. Because if it's half as bad as he fears, there's little that could stop him from getting up right here and now, crossing town and finishing his job mangling the bastard.

"He…" she looks down, smiles as if she's embarrassed, "He was my boyfriend, and my father didn't approve. We were together for six… no, more on seven years, on and off. He's the reason I dropped out of high school."

That's a surprise: he's seen this girl read, seen her care dusting his books. He expected her to have had big collegiate dreams before the Curse intervened, top of her class. "How did he manage that?"

"Parties, late nights, whole days… weeks skipped off school. He was… I don't know, a destructive influence, I guess. Wild and crazy and mean enough to be _interesting_. And I was seventeen, and stupid, and I decided that I didn't care what papa thought. I didn't expect him to disown me and kick me out of the house."

Mr Gold adds Moe French to his growing list of people to beat senseless.

He'd cast her out. She'd ended up destitute and alone, running away from everyone who should have cared for her, looked after her, because the man couldn't deal with a little teenage rebellion?

He'd known her circumstances back in that tower: he hadn't expected this new world, this false Storybrooke history, to mirror the true past so faithfully.

"I lived with George for a while, then Ruby and Granny took me in when we broke up, and I thought that was that. I was trying to get my life together, you know? Then a year later he showed back up again, sober and begging for a second chance." She looks down, lets out a bitter little huff of a laugh, "Ruby told me not to go with him; I haven't really even spoken to her since I marched out of her house to go back to him."

She looks him in the eyes, and he hopes that it's not just trauma that's prompted this truth-telling session, this trust in her eyes. "But… you have to understand that it was good again, for a while. It took a year for the fighting to start, and-"

"Belle," he says her new name as gently as he can, hoping he won't break the spell, hoping she'll stay and not run off like some frightened woodland creature, "What did he do?"

And with a small, sad smile, she shrugs and shifts Rose so she lies across her lap. Belle pulls up the hem of her t-shirt, and Gold sits up straighter so he can see properly.

There's a long scar over her hip, and a small, circular burn just above it. She points to each in turn, "Belt; cigarette."

Her voice is a little bit choked, like she's trying not to cry, and she busies herself with Rose's blankets, soothing her as if the child weren't fast asleep already, gathering her back in her arms like a tiny little shield.

And how in seven _fucking_ hells is Gold supposed to feel an ounce of guilt or remorse towards this man? The utter monster who left his painful and disfiguring mark on this strong and lovely girl?

He should have killed him on that sidewalk.

"That was the night I left." She says, finally, when she can look at him and speak with a clear, unwavering voice, "After he did that. I snuck out and ran to the convent."

And there's nothing more to say, nothing Gold can think to do to begin to comfort her. So he swings his leg around so it's stretched out off the end of the sofa, and inches across so he can wrap his arms around her, with Rose between them.


	6. Chapter 6

Regina Mills comes to see her, one morning in March.

Everything is brighter these days, warmer and sunnier. Gold smiles openly in the hallways, and Rose has started to sleep through the night, and everyday things are less dark, a little closer to the life she wanted for her daughter.

Belle can tell a monster from their smile. Mayor Mills has a mouth full of needles and dragon smoke, but her smile is warm and sweet as honey.

"Miss French?"

"Yes?"

"I don't know if we've met, dear, I just wanted to introduce myself."

"Hello, Madame Mayor." Belle sticks her hand out, formally, for the Mayor to shake. She hasn't crossed the threshold yet, she can still be banished without a word.

"You already know me?"

"Mr Gold has told me, and my papa voted for you."

"Ah. Well, you can call me Regina, dear."

"That's… kind of you, thank you." She smiles, and feels a sudden sunburst of joy to be able to use her new name, "I'm Belle."

The Mayor's smile twists for a second, and there's a flash of something that's not quite worry, not quite fear in her dark eyes. But then it's gone, and she's smiling with all her teeth, and Belle isn't sure what at all just happened.

"A pleasure. There was… something else, actually, that I wished to discuss. Would you mind if I just came inside for a spell?"

"Um," truth be told, Belle doesn't want this snake-eyed woman within a mile of her home. She's not sure why, perhaps because she knows of Mr Gold's dislike of the woman, and she follows his judgement. Perhaps because she's seen that hungry-eyed, superior look before, on the face of another woman with power over her, and she doesn't need another enemy, "Okay."

She stands aside, and Regina brushes past her. To her credit, she doesn't choose a seat in the living room without permission, as the Mother Superior did. But then, the Mayor is still establishing her power, trying to gain her footing here.

So it falls to Belle to lead them into the dining room – they can have a table to separate them, and it's closer to the door for a quick escape – and fetch the apple juice she has in a pitcher in the kitchen.

She's never been more thankful for Astrid. The nun had decided that it was time for her Sisters to meet Rose, and they were all meeting – in secret, because even Astrid could tell that the Mother would not approve – at Granny's.

Belle trusts Astrid with everything, and today she truly has.

But even if the Mother Superior tried something – and how could she, with Gold so firmly in Belle's corner? – Belle still has a feeling Rose is safer with Astrid than in this house, with Regina's gleaming smile.

"What did you want to discuss, Regina?" she asks, and keeps a bright and courteous smile in place.

"Your living arrangements, dear," she replies, "I've heard some rather worrying news from concerned sources that things are not… as they should be. I'd like to help."

Belle wants to upend the table, and hurl daggers at the woman's throat.

Because where was she when she was unemployed, living off cup-o-ramen, with George's accusations ringing in her ears?

Where was she when she was being hauled out of cafes by her arm, and humiliated in the street? When she was running for her life in the early morning, alone and homeless and pregnant?

She feels sick to her stomach, the idea that this woman feels she can be caring and controlling now, when she didn't give a rat's arse six months ago.

"My living arrangements are wonderful, thank you. I have no idea how someone could believe otherwise."

Regina's eyes lose their warmth, turn cold and hard, and oh, _this_ is her natural expression. Emotionless smile and dead eyes. Snakelike.

"Someone smashed your front window about a month ago."

"That's kind of old news, don't you think?"

"Well, there's also the George Gaston case that's re-emerged. The man you're living with… your employer, I believe? He's dangerous, Belle. He's not a person you want around a child."

"He's a good man, Regina, really." She tries the technique that failed on the Mother Superior, to pour the affection she feels into her tone and pass it along, "He's never been anything but a true gentleman, and he's wonderful with Rose."

She knows it's true as she says it: in all her time here, he's never said a harsh word, never raised his voice, not to her at any rate. The only thing he's ever done was to George, and that wasn't exactly unprovoked. Or undeserved, for that matter.

"That may be, but he still broke his own window and beat a man half to death in the street."

Belle is stunned, "He didn't break the window; George did. He threw a brick."

"Perhaps that's only what your 'gentleman' employer would like to think. Don't forget, Belle, there are people in this town who have known him far longer than you have. He's dangerous and violent, as you should have seen by now."

"George _slapped my face in front of our daughter_," Belle says mouth open in utter shock, "I know what Gold did was wrong, but his intentions were good."

"Stockholme Syndrome," she murmurs, and there's such glee in her smile even as her tone is concerned and caring, "So tragic."

"Excuse me?"

"You've been trapped here so long, that you can't see when someone tries to rescue you."

"_Mr Gold_ rescued me."

"From a happy adoption for your daughter and a safe, warm life in a convent. Yes, what a hero." Her voice drips poison and sarcastic sneer, and Belle wants to slap her.

"You spoke to the Mother Superior."

Regina's tone becomes a little sharper, the wounded voice of a misunderstood friend "Belle, I'm trying to help you. No one wants to steal your baby in the middle of the night: we want to give her her best chance, the same as you do."

"Her best chance is where she is loved. No one could love her more than I do, _no one should be without her mother_."

Regina's fist clenches, but she forces relaxation into her tone and smile, "Don't forget, dear, that you're speaking to someone who knows what they're talking about. I adopted my son through Mr Gold; _I_ am his mother. I love him more than I could have imagined."

"Then you understand: _please don't take her from me_." Belle doesn't want to beg for Rose's life, for the right to hold the only thing she's ever really cared about in her arms, but she will.

"You misunderstand me. I love Henry because I _chose_ to have him. By all accounts, you were in no fit state to have a baby when you did, and I know for a fact that you have no stake in this house. A life of uncertainty is no life for a child."

"I love her. Everything else is a technicality."

"Oh, yes. Food, shelter, clothing. Mere trifles when compared with _true love_." The Mayor sneers, and Belle wonders what she did to deserve the hatred in her eyes.

"My daughter's circumstances are none of your business."

"On the contrary," Regina stands, places hands flat on the table and looms over her prey, "The owner of his house is a violent criminal, who should be doing time for grievous bodily harm. And it is clear to me now that you are mentally and emotionally unstable, that Rose would be safer with someone… else."

And with that, she turns and sweeps out, the door slamming shut behind her.

Gold finds her an hour later, when he comes home to collect something he's forgotten, and is by her side in a moment, "What happened, Belle?"

She's sobbing: she'd sat in shock for God knows how long, staring at the wood grain and imagining a whole other life for Rose, with a faceless, cookie-cutter family, and no love at all.

But now she sobs; huge, body-wracking things that shake her bones and burn her eyes, as she clings to the man she once thought a dragon.

He strokes her hair, and stiffens when she chokes the name 'Regina'.

"Did she threaten you?" Belle looks up at him with wide, tearstained eyes, and nods, biting her lip to keep from howling, "What did she say?"

"She-" Belle swallows, and tries to drag some of his strength, his calm and composure, into her body, "She said you were a violent criminal, and I was insane, and something about Stockholm syndrome, and… Oh God!" she collapses, boneless, and he catches her as she falls.

He holds her up, grabs his cane and helps her across the hallway to the living room, so she can relax on the couch. He has a feeling she needs comfort, right now.

"There, now, Belle… what is it, love, what did she say? What do I have to do?"

"She's going to take Rose away," She whispers, with a trembling certainty, "She's going to steal away my baby."

* * *

Gold wants nothing more than to storm across town to the Mayor's black and white nightmare of an office and rip her screaming, bile-coated throat out.

But that's not how the game is played.

So he swallows, hard, and rocks Belle's trembling little body back and forth, and tries to keep his murderous, raging anger under tight control. That's not what she needs, right now, not at all. She needs someone to hold her hand and keep her together. She needs a white knight, not a dark sorcerer in mottled, rotting armour.

"Shh, shh," he murmurs, "Don't worry, she won't manage it."

"Oh, really?" she looks up at him, and she's even beautiful when she's red and blotchy and covered in tears, "One contract and she was supposed to be gone. I didn't even sign it, Gold, you _know_ that. How can I stop her this time?"

"Well, first of all, we have our new contract, don't we? Hmm?"

She seems a little calmed by that, as she nods, "The old one… where is it?"

"In a drawer upstairs."

"You didn't shred it?"

"Oh, no. I thought you might need it should that… _nun_ ever come by again."

"Okay…" he can see her quick little mind at work, looking for boltholes and safe spaces and ways around. One day, he swears, she won't need that little talent anymore, "So at least we have legal reason why I'm here. Employment."

"Yes."

"But she's…" she sighs, the wind gone from her sails and replaced by despair, "She can still declare me an unfit mother. She has the power to do that: I've heard the stories."

"Well then, there's one thing left to do." He grins, as though all their problems are solved, "We'll take you to Archie Hopper in the morning, get your pretty little head all checked out, and have a certificate to prove it."

And she's giggling, now, the manic little giggle of a parent on the edge of insane worry, of anguish. He sang that song for centuries.

"Yes, yes, and then she'll stop!"

"She'll have to, eventually. I'll speak to the Sheriff as well, in the end, law enforcement will have to have some sway."

"The Mother Superior set her up to this," she says, quietly, as she settles herself against his shoulder, "I don't know why, but she hates me." She sighs, "Everyone seems to hate me, these days."

"Not everyone." He mutters, into the top of her chestnut, cherry-scented hair, and she's looking up at him with massive blue eyes, desperate to believe him.

Then, completely out of the blue, she presses her lips against his and sighs into his mouth. She kisses him so softly, so sweetly he thinks he might die, that he might already be dead, that he must have done something saintly to deserve this.

It takes him a moment, but then his hands are cupping her jaw, and his tongue runs along her lower lip, and she sighs again and crumples into him, and oh _Gods_ this is wrong.

She tastes like cinnamon and lemons, warm and strong but clean: he'll keep the memory of her taste locked away in his mind, someplace safe and warm.

He pulls away, and shakes his head, "You're in shock, dearie," he says, "You'll regret kissing old, gnarled toads come morning."

"You're nothing close to a _toad_." She objects, and leans in to try to kiss him again.

But he pulls back, and moves his hands down to safe areas on her back and waist, and pulls her in so he's just holding her, her head against his heart.

It doesn't help when she starts _nuzzling_ his neck.

He's started to drift off, convinced that she's done the same, the day having been a tough one for her already. But then there are lips on the skin of his throat, just above his collar, and she's kissing every inch of skin she can find, and he wonders just how bad taking advantage of a desperate single mother can _really_ be.

"Belle, love," he murmurs, and feels her wicked grin against his skin, "Stop."

"Why?" she looks up at him, and behind the false bravado of her smile there's a genuine fear of rejection. He has to tread lightly, so he doesn't hurt her even more, "Don't… don't you want to?"

He breathes out, and it comes out a little ragged, "If you only knew how much… let's just say, you wouldn't be asking that question."

"Oh," she smiles, bites her lip, and tries to resume her work on his neck. He stops her with a little shift of his shoulder.

"But that doesn't mean I will. Belle… you're alone, and frightened. You need a friend, and I'm happy to be just that… but we can't go any further. Not like this."

She's about to ask something else, when the doorbell rings. They freeze, neither of them willing to move, afraid that Regina has returned. But then there's a voice, "Hello? Belle?"

Belle sighs in relief, and relaxes, "It's open, Astrid!" she calls, and the little nun's nervous face pokes around the door and smiles.

"Oh, sorry. I came to return your baby, all nice and in one piece." She comes around and hands Rose back to her mother. Belle visibly relaxes when she has her daughter back in her arms, and coos and smiles down into her wide blue eyes.

But then she settles back against Gold's chest, and his arm automatically wraps around her, and Astrid's doe-eyes widen for just a moment.

"Well, ah… the girls all love her, of course. Mira and Tatiana want to visit sometime soon, if possible, they can't get enough of her."

"Oh," Belle's face flushes in pleasure, "That'd be wonderful, of course they can come by, anytime they like."

Gold wrinkles his nose at that: fairies aren't his favourite things. But as he remembers, their Princess and the Sugarplum fairy were two of the better ones: they'd at least had a sense of humour when he'd come to wreak havoc.

"Okay, I'll pass that along. I'd um… I'd better be going…" she picks herself up, and makes to leave. A curious little look passes between the pair before Astrid shoots him a final, parting smile – okay, maybe that one little nun had something about her – and leaves.

* * *

Astrid looks like she's about to explode, bouncing in her seat and fidgeting with her napkin. So Belle takes her time choosing what she wants from Granny's menu, chats with Ruby as she orders, and settles Rose in her pram beside their table before she says a word.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" she asks, as if she doesn't already know.

"Let's start with what happened two days ago," Astrid's voice drops to a low and urgent, almost scandalised whisper, "What were you doing when I got there?"

"I was sitting in the living room." Belle replies, calmly. She loves Astrid like the fussy, caring sister she'd never had, but it is _fun_ to torture her.

"With Mr Gold wrapped _all around you_!" the nun finishes the sentence for her, "What _happened_? Did he drug you or something?"

"What? No. I mean... he's my friend, Astrid. I told you that."

"I knew you two were getting on better these days..." she worries on her lower lip, "But... Belle, he's... a _friend_ is one thing, but he's a bit... _evil_."

And Belle has to snort a little laugh into her milkshake. Because of all the people she's had to deal with in the past year, Gold is perhaps one of the least truly evil among them.

She has no illusions that he is a _good_ person: the incident with George certainly proves that this isn't a calm and caring angel she's rooming with. But he is _honest_, and honestly looms large in Belle's world. She's never once felt that he's showing her a face other than his true one: that is a great comfort all on its own.

He's never come to her to tell her she can't raise her own child.

He'd tried to take Rose away the day she was born, but only because the Mother Superior paid him to, and told him that the mother was fine with it.

After that, he has never once made any move at all to separate them: in fact, he is still the only person to ever promise otherwise.

At least he's never tried to do anything _for her own good_.

Belle is so sick of being _pitied_, she feels physically ill.

So she looks Astrid in the eyes, and lets a slow smile show across her face, "Well… maybe just a little, but I kind of like it."

"Belle!"

"What? He's… I don't know… real, I guess. Honest. He's not trying to convince anyone that he's more or less than himself. Well, okay, maybe he tries to come off bigger and badder than he really is but… he was _there_. I was going completely insane yesterday afternoon and he just… he held me and let me ruin his suit and I was sobbing, Astrid. I was crying so hard, I was gross, but he was so nice to then I kissed him and-"

"Wait, you _kissed_ him?"

"Yeah…" a dopey little smile comes to her face. He'd been right, of course: she was vulnerable, and it would have been wrong to go any further then and there, a big awful mistake.

But it was also his fault: did the man really _have_ to smell so good?

"And?"

"He ah, kind of took my breath away." Astrid is bouncing in her seat again, practically clapping her hands in glee, "Then he decided that that was the moment to come over all noble, and pushed me away." She grimaces, a little embarrassed, "Though I might have tried to push the issue a little…"

"Okay, okay," Astrid calms herself as Belle watches, amused, "Right. Moving on from your salacious adventures – which we are not done with, by the way,", Belle giggles, "There's something else important here. You were sobbing?

Belle takes a deep breath, and scrutinises Astrid's face, trying to gauge whether her friend can cope with the news. But Astrid has more to her than meets the eye, more iron in her spine than her soft brown doe-eyes and sweet little voice would let the world believe.

So Belle shuts her eyes for just a second, and marshals her emotions so she won't break down into fearful shaking and crying like she did at the time, and begins her story.

She recounts every move Regina made, every word she said, and the parallels she drew with her own son, and she does so with her head high and tone firm and even. But she can't hide the little shake in her voice as she describes the ice in the Mayor's eyes as she made her threats.

And Astrid's eyes widen more with every word, her slim little hand clasped around Belle's in a strangely reassuring hold.

When she's done, Belle takes a long drink of her hot chocolate, and leans down to check on Rose. Her daughter is awake and staring around, taking in the whole diner with wide, curious blue eyes.

This has become her safety mechanism: dealing with Rose, making sure she's all right and settled and happy. It's her distraction when she doesn't want to look at the rest of the world.

She's buried herself in her daughter, and perhaps she could be braver, face the world head-on. But of all the boltholes and sanctuaries she's ever found, this is the best of all.

"Oh, Belle..." Astrid breathes, "Do you think she can do it?"

"I don't know, Astrid. I mean... she's the Mayor, you know? And she has a creepy amount of power in this town, more than she should, I think. If she put her mind to it..."

"But Mr Gold is hopeful?" The worry that had been in Astrid's voice in their talk of him earlier is entirely gone: she can see, now, that he isn't the real enemy here.

"He thinks we can work around it. I mean, I'm as sane as I've ever been, and he didn't break the window, whatever Regina says, but..." she sighs, "He did do a number on George. And so he now has a criminal record for a violent crime, even if George was completely fine and the Sheriff's not pressing heavy charges."

"Is he going to have to do time?"

"No, the Sheriff doesn't think so." She can't hide a little smirk; "She said something about community service."

Astrid gets the image instantly, and sniggers, and Belle loses the control she's had firmly in place ever since Emma mentioned the idea. The thought of Mr Gold, the town's imposing and impeccably dressed worst nightmare, clad in a bright orange tabard picking up trash on the highway is too funny for words.

Of course, Mr Gold chooses that exact moment to enter the diner, and approaches the pair with the same sober expression he always wears in public.

They just laugh harder, "Something the matter, dear?" he asks, a little concerned, one hand on Belle's shoulder.

Weirdly enough, that quietens her, "Yes, yes, sorry. I was just… nothing." The heat from his palm radiates through her thin t-shirt, and Belle wonders what she's started by allowing these thoughts entry.

She can't stop thinking about their kiss: this is a problem.

Astrid is eyeing him speculatively, and Belle catches his perplexed little frown. And maybe he has drugged her, because she suddenly thinks that that little frown might be one of the most adorable things she's ever seen someone other than Rose do.

"Are you ladies finished?" He asks, as he glances down at Rose who is staring up at him with wide eyes.

"Um, just about, yeah." Belle replies, watching with a wide and uncontained smile as Gold says hello to her daughter, smile wider than any she's seen him wear for anyone fully-grown, and Rose beams back, all sunshine and brilliance. Her little gurgle of laugher makes Belle's heart twist, the way it always does when her daughter decides to be enchanting.

"Okay then," He smiles to Astrid, who – to Belle's utter mortification – gives an almost-saucy little wink, and waits for Belle to gather up her baby things and get ready to depart.

He even holds the door for her – good thing, because her hands are full trying to manoeuvre the pram outside.

"What was your matter with your friend, dear?" he asks, once they're past the diner and walking down the street.

"Astrid? Nothing, why?" she can feel the blush rising in her cheeks, but hopes he doesn't notice.

No such luck. She sees his interested little smirk, and wants the pavement to swallow her whole.

But his voice is mild as he replies, "She was giving me the most curious little look. Anything you'd like to share, love?"

He is _enjoying_ watching her squirm.

She glares up at him, his smile wide and unrepentant, and resists the urge to smack him across the arm, "No, actually, just girl stuff."

"Uh-huh," he nods, but looked thoroughly unconvinced, "Right. Hair scrunchies and things."

"Yes, only we're adults and so have gone beyond the realms of the little girls on the kids' channels. You need to watch more grown-up TV or something if that's your go-to idea of how women talk."

"So what _were_ you talking about?" he presses, and his smile is almost a leer.

He's being awfully flirtatious for the man who no less then twenty-four hours ago was nobly pushing her off of him and trying to be chivalrous.

"Regina, actually," she says, at last, "I thought someone else needed to know the truth."

His face clouds, the humour and merry spark gone from his eyes, "Ah. In case you need a babysitter?"

"I guess. She needs to know what she's dealing with if she's got Rose and Regina comes calling."

"How about the Mother Superior? Does she know to watch out for her, too?"

"Of course not!" She replies, appalled he'd even consider the idea, "She's followed her for most of her life: I can't take that away from her."

"She should know the truth."

Belle stops, turns to him, hopes he'll understand, "She's not Rose's mother." She says, gently, "This wrong wasn't done to her... And the Mother Superior…" she sighs, messes with her hair, frowning, "I don't want to take that away from her. I can't do that."

"She has to find out sometime." He comments, smirking at Mary Margaret Blanchard as she scuttles past, enjoying the flicker of fear that passes over her face.

Belle watches this happen and rolls her eyes, "You're a troll." She says, resisting the urge to thump his shoulder.

He turns to her, smiling but entirely baffled, "I'm sorry? What am I, dear?"

"A troll."

"I'm neither seven feet tall nor green and rancid, thank you very much."

"Not literally," she sighs, "You just enjoy winding people up for your own sick amusement."

"Indeed." He grins, entirely unrepentant, "You should try it sometime."

"I happen to like being a nice, normal human being, thanks all the same."

"It's good to inspire a little random fear every now and then," he smirks, "It's good for the soul."

"Hmmm," they stop outside their destination, and she glances at the sign on the door with some apprehension, "Maybe you're the one who needs therapy."

"You don't need it either, love," he says, with a tenderness that makes her tremble. She's got that feeling again, that crazy, maddening feeling she had yesterday in the sofa, like all she wants is to wrap her arms around him and never let go.

She leans up, and presses a kiss to his lips, just once, just lightly. She opens her eyes, and sees his closed, and can't help but smile like Rose with her favourite stuffed animal.

"I'll see you this evening," she says, then opens the door and manoeuvres the pram inside, and leaves him watching her, stunned and smiling.


	7. Chapter 7

He stands outside Archie Hopper's practice, with the taste of Belle still fresh on his lips, and his self-restraint hanging by a thread.

He has to keep reminding himself that she is most definitely _off limits_.

She's alone, and hurting, and needs to be left to figure her life out on her own. And he certainly doesn't need anything in his life for Regina to smash and burn in her wake. But that doesn't mean he doesn't _want_ to.

And the damned woman is making it hard to keep turning her down.

It's not as if this is anything more than a natural, _human_ reaction to having a beautiful young woman living in his home. No matter that he didn't think anything of this until a few weeks ago. No matter that the idea of anyone hurting a hair on her head makes him want to kill things with his bare hands.

Speaking of which: George Gaston has been stalking them for the past two blocks, and Gold's had just about enough of it. He can see him from across the street, watching from an alleyway, trying his very hardest to look menacing.

Gold supposes that kittens and small children – the weak kind, who are easily frightened and cowed into obedience – might be a little put off by George's glower.

But Gold is an old dragon, recently awakened from a deep and eternal slumber, and he will not be glared at by a stupid whelp with a nasty temper. There is a natural order of things, and George belongs nowhere near the top.

He belongs somewhere far below, among the bottom-feeders and dung beetles.

Gold smiles with all his teeth, and starts to walk.

He wonders if the boy will allow him to stroll on past. If he has any sense, he will let the fight go, leave well enough alone, and keep all of his teeth intact.

Gold would happily rip every last one of them from the boy's jawbone, one by one.

He passes the mouth of the alley, and is ready for the hand that reaches to grab him. He stops the arm with his cane as he used to stop swords with his bare hands, slaps it aside, and turns to face his would-be attacker.

"Do you have a problem, Mr Gaston?" he asks, pleasantly, as if he's just been tapped on the shoulder and not almost manhandled. But he presses his cane horizontally across the boy's throat, and slowly compresses his windpipe.

"Stay the fuck away from Isobel," George gasps, "She's mine."

"Actually," Gold replies, dragon smile in full force, fire behind his eyes, "I think you'll find that the lady would disagree. So why don't you back off, and leave her alone, hmm?"

The thought of what this cretin did to the _mother of his own child_ twists Gold's stomach. He wants to combust the boy where he stands, burn him slowly, skin then muscle then bone, and leave only charred and painful ashes behind as evidence. It takes all he has not to hex him on the spot; he only refrains because Storybrooke is a Magic Free Zone, and he's not going to be the first to break that little stalemate.

Still, the memory of those scars on Belle's soft, pale skin hangs behind his eyes.

"Is she fucking you?" Such a limited vocabulary he has. Gold would sneer if he weren't so angry, "Huh? That why she's all shacked up with the _crypt keeper_?" he has the nerve to laugh, even as it's getting harder to breathe, "Can't keep her legs closed, banging for roof?"

"Oh, dearie," Gold feels Rumpelstiltskin rising beneath his skin, ready to attack, bleeding through the fault lines, desperate to tear the boy's bones from his flesh and have them dance on the grave. He presses harder, and George clutches the sides of the cane with both hands, trying to shake free, "I wouldn't say such things, if I were you."

"What, you gonna smack me with your cane again, huh grandpa?" George smirks; Gold contemplates where to hide the body, "Saw what happened last time. Hot cop lady got you and carted you off. And Isobel doesn't like shit like that, does she?"

"What would you do to her? If you had her back?" he needs a direct quote, something he can't wriggle out of.

"She's mine," George hisses, "Always has been. She won't get away again: you have to train _unfaithful bitches_ not to run."

The spell that slips through is minor compared to what could have happened. The murderous rage in Gold's bones could have crushed mountains into dust, and made the skies bleed, and torn whole continents into archipelagos. He would have ripped the bastard's heart out and shown it to him, crushed it in his palm, allowed Regina to find the corpse and draw her own conclusions.

But all it does is knock the boy unconscious.

It wouldn't even brain damage him. Pity.

But no one had seen their little altercation, so he can brush himself down, give the boy a good kick in the ribs for good measure, and walk away. He could have fallen and slipped. He seemed the type.

This, Gold promises himself, will be his last act of violence: until the final battle, when everyone would be hacking and slashing.

He can't keep beating the same man into unconsciousness.

But he also can't see a way to have the boy gone for good: neither one of them can leave Storybrooke. Even if they could, George seems the type to hang over a person like an oafish shadow.

But this is the second confrontation the boy has started, and added to a brick through the front window: this has become a serious threat.

He can't risk it being Belle and Rose pulled into the alleyway next time, instead of him.

So he abandons his plans to go home, and heads instead in the direction of the Sheriff's office. Gold has a feeling this problem is in need of a pure and incorruptible hero, and much as it pains him to say it, Emma's probably his best chance.

* * *

"Do you mind leaving your daughter with my receptionist?" Dr Hopper asks, as he invites Belle into his office.

He sees her discomfort, smiles encouragingly. Belle can't see any dishonesty in his green eyes, nothing to indicate an ulterior motive or malicious intent. She's been lied to and admonished an awful lot recently by people who at first appeared the same.

But she wants to trust him; has to, for this to work.

So she nods, stiffly, and says "She'll be alright out here?"

The receptionist pipes up, "She'll be just fine, Miss French, don't worry about it. If she so much as turns over in her sleep I'll page Dr Hopper immediately, okay?"

Sooner or later, Belle is going to have to accept that not everyone in this whole town is out to steal her baby away and throw her out of her home. She figures that this is probably as good a place as any to start. So she wheels the pram around the back of the desk, and leans down to press a kiss to Rose's forehead, before nodding once in thanks to the other woman and following Dr Hopper into his office.

She settles herself on the soft, slightly over-stuffed sofa, and waits for Dr Hopper to take his seat opposite her, "So, Isobel, why did you make this appointment with me today?"

"It's Belle, actually," She smiles, tries to look as stable as possible, "I changed it recently."

"Oh, I'm sorry about that," he smiles, a little embarrassed, "Belle it is, then. Does this name change have anything to do with what you wanted to talk about?"

"Um... a little, I guess. I need you to do something for me – I can pay you extra, if that's what's needed, but I needed an expert's help with this."

Dr Hopper nods, intrigued, "And what would that be?"

"I need a certificate or... I don't know, some kind of legal document, saying that I'm sane and healthy and not, you know, psychotic or something."

"Alright," Dr Hopper smiles, "Can I ask why you would need such a thing? Sanity is a rather large ballpark to work in."

She's heard stories about Dr Archie Hopper, about things that happened when she was first out of the hospital and spent her days locked up in Gold's house; when she went whole days just hiding with her daughter in their sunlit little room and reading like the world didn't exist. She's heard he helped to save the Mayor's kid from down a well, and that people saw him take a stand against Regina. She's heard that, since then, everyone in town has trusted him without question.

And Gold seems to agree with them, which counts for a lot these days.

My enemy's enemy and all that.

"I think someone's trying to take my daughter away. And this isn't paranoia or something; I don't think there are ninjas hiding behind the curtains or child-snatchers in the streets... I have real reason to think that."

"And so why do you need my help?"

"The Mayor is trying to prove that I'm an unfit mother. She wants to put Rose up for adoption, and I think the Mother Superior from the convent outside of town is going to help her to do it."

"I see," Dr Hopper nods, and tips his head to one side, "Has she said anything explicit, to make you feel this way?"

"She visited me yesterday and all but spelt it out. She kept talking about _choosing_ to be a mother and giving my daughter her best chance and she accused Mr Gold of being a violent criminal..." She trails off, the horror of the previous afternoon still fresh in her mind. She hasn't been this scared since before Rose was born.

"You live with Mr Gold, don't you?" she nods, and he makes a little note on his pad, "But I'm assuming he's not Rose's father?"

"He's the closest thing she has to a real dad," she replies, and tries not to feel the little sunburst of warmth in her chest at the idea of raising her daughter with him, not alone anymore, "But no. George Gaston is the father."

"And is there any friction between them?"

"You haven't heard already?"

Dr Hopper smiles, "I'd rather hear it from you. Gossip in this town can be a little sensationalised."

"He doesn't like that we're not together anymore." She chooses her words carefully, lines them up one after another, "Or that I don't want him on the same planet as my daughter. He decided to express those feelings."

"And I hear it was in public? On the street for all to hear? That must have been pretty difficult."

"I've heard all of his shit before, many times. He threatened Rose as well as me, though, and Gold was there, and he kind of... lost it." She reaches up, traces the faint red line on her cheek where George slapped her, "He was provoked."

"And George had been violent with you before? When the two of you were a couple?"

"Yes."

"But you don't feel like you want revenge on him for that?"

"Why would that help?"

"Catharsis?" he suggests, and she wonders what it is he wants to hear.

"All I want is for him to leave us alone, I don't honestly care if he lives or dies. I have a daughter, and a home, and friends who care about me. That's what matters."

Dr Hopper smiles at her, a wonderfully friendly, crunched-up sort of smile that makes her want to follow suit, "That might be the sanest thing anyone's ever said in here."

"So you'll help me?" He doesn't say anything for a moment, and she wonders what he must think of her. "Dr Hopper-"

"Archie," he corrects, "I'm Archie, not Dr Hopper, and yes. If someone is really trying to prove you're unstable or deranged, then I will testify otherwise."

* * *

Gold enters the Sheriff's office with a certain amount of purpose, and finds Emma in her office. He knocks on the glass door, not sure if he's supposed to just walk right in or wait to be invited.

Usually, of course, he'd just waltz inside and wait for her to speak to him.

But this time pissing off the Sheriff isn't going to help anything, fun though it might be. He actually needs her help, for once, and staying on her narrow little good side would be an asset.

She looks up from her lunch, mouth half-full of pastrami sandwich, and looks completely stunned to see him.

But then she recovers, and chews down her mouthful, and beckons him inside.

"Hey, Mr Gold," she greets him, gestures for him to take a seat, radiating awkwardness and unease, "What can I do for you today?"

"I need to report a crime." He says, and she nods, pulling out a sheet of file paper to take down the details.

"Uh huh, so what happened?"

"I was assaulted in the street, and my home was vandalised."

"Okay..." she looks up at him, frowning, "I'm sorry, what?"

He sighs, and repeats himself, "The same person who through a brick through my window about a month back decided to attack me in the street today."

"Who in town would try that on you?" she asks. It's a fair question: when she arrived in town nine months ago, he'd been fairly well untouchable. Everyone was just instinctively afraid of him, or hated him, or a combination of both. At any rate, his double-glazing was secure.

That, of course, was pre-Belle. She was where the trouble started.

But he is where it ends. This town is still his, after all, and he was promised _comfort_. Regina is his next stop after this.

"I believe you're already familiar with the story there, Sheriff Swan," he replies, "His name is George Gaston, he has a little... disagreement with my houseguest. He likes to take out his frustrations with his fists."

"Hmm, you don't look bruised."

He smiles, a lightning-flash of pointed, predatory teeth, "I never said he was successful."

She groans, "Please don't say he's in the hospital again."

"The boy is perfectly fine, I assure you. Sleeping off the ordeal."

"Then what do you need me for?"

"He doesn't respond to my usual... methods. What he wants, I have no intention of offering him. There is no deal to be struck."

She frowns, unsure of what to do with that. For a magical curse-breaker, she really is phenomenally dense when it comes to the terms of magic.

"And this wasn't the first attack?"

"He threw a brick through my window, sometime around Valentine's day. Until today I thought that might be the end of it – an eye for an eye and all that – but this cannot continue."

And she's smiling at him, now, a sly and knowing smile he's not at all comfortable with, "You're afraid he'll come after Isobel."

"It had crossed my mind: she is the source of his problem with me, after all."

"And you care enough not to just let it happen." She's properly smirking at him now, "That's really kind of sweet."

"You can be quiet now, Sheriff."

"You're not even here for yourself, you're here for her! If it were just you you'd be able to handle it... you're actually _worried_ about her."

"I'm concerned about my property," he snarls, a dragon protecting his weak spots, "I don't need to wake up with my bed on fire, thank you."

He stands, makes to leave, but Emma lets out a small giggle and doesn't let him escape, "Mr Gold, defender of single mothers and small children." she says, "I never thought I'd see the day."

He turns back, snaps, "Yes, well, I'd appreciate if you kept quiet, if it's all the same."

"Of course," she nods, "My lips are sealed. I'll look into it: the guy gave me trouble during the interview, too. He kept making passes at me and making stupid threats. Arresting him shouldn't be too hard."

"Good." He gives a grim little smile, and leaves her to her work.

* * *

Belle is almost bouncy, the next few days, jogging Rose in her arms as she walks rather than using the pram. She's sane. She's sane, she's sane, she's _sane_.

Sane and happy and normal as the sunrise.

She hadn't realised how little she really believed that until someone new, someone qualified and objective, decided to tell her so. Because how could she be whole and sane and real, when every moment of the last near-decade had been spent in pain and darkness?

She'd be lying if she claimed that Regina hadn't struck several nerves.

Belle had had words buzzing and shrieking in her head for months: clinical, cold, terrifying phrases like _post-natal depression_, and _unfit mother_. Words designed to rip her child from her breast and place her in the hands of a faceless new mother.

But now she was free, loose-limbed and confident, dancing along sidewalks in the sunshine without fear or sorrow.

Now she was _normal_, and no word had ever sounded sweeter to her ears.

Mainly because she hadn't felt it since she was seventeen, perhaps even younger.

Perhaps she'd believed herself damaged and broken, _wrong_ on some deep and fundamental level, since the moment her mother died and everyone's eyes became uncomfortable, closed and sad and far, far away.

But Belle is normal, and the sunshine has become warm and bright, soft and caressing on the bare skin of her arms, on the dark hair of her baby's head.

And this is why she doesn't shake when, on a Sunday of all days, she sees a very familiar little shape bustling toward her down the high street. The Mother Superior's smile is like cut glass, eyes hard and narrowed and serpentine.

"Isobel!" she coos, as she pulls her in for the hardest little hug Belle has ever felt, "How good to see you, dear!"

"It's nice to see you, too," she lies, holding Rose just a little bit closer.

"And ooh!" she continues, eyes fixed on Rose's dark little head, "She's grown so much, hasn't she? Why, I remember when she was small enough to fit on one forearm!"

"Yes, she's all big and sturdy now," Belle nods, hoping she can brush the woman off without barbs or shrapnel, "I'm actually taking her home: it's time for a nap."

"Yes home…" The Mother Superior's eyes cloud with purpose, and Belle laments her misstep. She should have been visiting a friend, or going to the diner, anything else, "I need to speak with you about that, actually. Have you thought any more about what I said?"

It's been over six months, and Belle has avoided this little woman in this miniscule town like the plague. Of course she's thought about it. "No, actually."

"Oh, well, that is a pity. I'd thought better of you, Isobel." Her frown is motherly and disapproving, meaning to cow an errant and disobedient daughter into obedience. But Belle hasn't been a daughter since she was seventeen, and she has since battled ogres with heavy fists and sharp claws, faced off a dragon in his own lair and made her home in the heart of a volcano.

Belle is no longer a daughter: Belle is a _mother_, and she will burn and smash and kill to keep her daughter safe.

But swords and flaming torches aren't what's needed here, for this is a war of women, a war of words and harsh opinions, of advice, and so she chooses her chess pieces with care "Yes, well, that's what comes of saying things that are unthinkable."

The nun rolls her eyes to cover her flash of surprise, "Oh, Isobel, always so dramatic."

"You're trying to make me give up my daughter," Belle responds, voice flat and calm, "There's nothing I could do that would be overly dramatic."

"I'm trying to do what's _best for the child_," the Mother Superior hisses, "So there's no need for selfish declarations. It's time to grow up, Isobel. It's time to do what's best for _her_."

"Oh, like you did what was best for me? Trading my baby away to a man you don't even trust without even a word?" she plays her most powerful card as if it's nothing, casts it down at her enemy's feet and waits for her reaction.

The Mother Superior wears the look of a misunderstood friend, shocked and hurt and so wounded that Belle wants to smack her, "That you couldn't keep to your commitment and forced an innocent into your corrupted little life is most definitely not my fault. And I'm surprised that you've sunk so low as to believe that it could be."

Perhaps, a few months ago, when she was running and hiding and so very scared, Belle could have doubted herself. Perhaps she could have looked into that rounded, sweetly pretty face and sought to believe her honeyed lies.

But not now, and never again.

Belle is sane and strong and _normal_, and the pleas of an old enemy fall flat on her ears. She leans in, quiet and confidential, mimicking the Mr Gold's solicitous tones, "We both know different, don't we, dear?" she adds the endearment as a sign of authority, to put her in her place.

Belle is _strong_, now, and she's not scared of anything.

"I beg your pardon?" the Mother Superior's self-righteous feathers are ruffled, but her voice is curiously high, almost frightened.

"I know you forged my signature, and have evidence to prove it. So back the _hell_ off, leave my daughter alone, and hold your tongue. Or would you rather the Sheriff got a hold of your little forgery?"

She summons every verbal trick she knows from Gold's arsenal, imagines that he speaks with her tongue, and hides nervous little Isobel French in a deep well inside her mind. She inserts all the authority of his dark suit and cane and menace into her voice and lets the Mother Superior shrink before her very eyes.

And the nun says nothing, just stares up with a shocked defiance that poorly-conceals real fear.

"I thought as much. So," her eyes glint, teeth bared, the accomplice of the town's darkest feature, the town sorcerer, "Do we have a deal?"

There is a long pause, tension crackling in the air, as Belle watches her old nemesis fall and crumble and dissemble into dust right in front of her.

Then, with a stiff nod, and a muttered, "May God have mercy on your soul," the Mother Superior nods in agreement, and bustles on past.

Belle practically runs home, but her spine feels like soft, pliable steel, and even as she follows an old routine of settling her daughter, and hiding under a blanket in front of the TV, and falling asleep on the couch, it doesn't feel as it used to.

This is no longer her life, the whole sum total of everything she's worth. This is just a comfort, another easy way to be, an option she has among a new array of differing paths and choices, of glittering ideas, and ways to walk the world without fear.


	8. Chapter 8

Gold is up late, doing accounts for the shop, watching some television – because she said he should, and really, it's not entirely unpleasant to have something on in the background as he organises his inventory files – and generally keeping busy.

Five days.

That's how long he's been a Good Person.

Five days since she kissed him in public, and he didn't grab her and ravish her right then and there. Five days since he was attacked in the street, and didn't kill the bastard where he stood. Five days since he started trying to act more human than monster.

And it's not been easy, but her good will is making it worthwhile.

That doesn't mean he trusts himself. No, not at all: who knows better than himself how untrustworthy and downright dishonest he can be?

So he's up late working: because it's that, or end up lying awake, thinking about the woman down the hall. About how that hallway seemed a much greater distance six months ago, and how he really doesn't think she'd mind too much if he just took the twelve steps – he's counted, and hates himself for it – it would take from his door to hers, and went inside.

And that's a train of thought that doesn't end well.

Well, he thinks, with a little smirk, it actually ends very well indeed. It's just the continuation he has a problem with, the fact that she'll inevitably pull away from him come daybreak, how it would change his status from _friend and ally_ to _yet another problem_ in her eyes.

He's a mean, twisted and selfish old man. He'd rather have her next to him in friendship than banished a thousand miles away by a few moments of almost-love.

So he's up late working, and this train of thought has repeated itself at least five or six times in one hour.

It is midnight when he stands, shuffles his papers into something resembling a tidy pile, and hobbles upstairs to bed. He passes her room – it's the first on the right, so she wouldn't have to pass his own bedroom when she first moved in – on his way, and he isn't going to stop.

He isn't going to peek inside, and allow his inappropriately active imagination for a man of his age to run wild.

He almost makes it, before he hears Rose whimper in her cradle, hears the little sobs that will inevitably lead to full on wailing. If they start, they will wake Belle from her well-earned rest, from the sleep that motherhood too often denies her, and anxiety does little to encourage.

So he does what any friend would do: he limps inside, slowly, quietly, and gathers the baby in his arms, rocking and soothing her slowly.

Rose isn't to be quietened in moments, she needs a feed and some attention, and Gold thinks about waking her mother and leaving her to it. Belle would probably prefer it, to be woken and trusted to sooth her own daughter rather than trust someone else.

And he knows, how he knows, how much she's beginning to hate people trying to help and patronising her.

But he's also concerned by the tension she carries in her limbs, by the bags under her eyes which no foundation can hide, and the weariness in her footsteps, sometimes, when she thinks he doesn't notice.

He can take care of a baby for all of five minutes, and settle her back to sleep, without intruding on Belle's well-guarded territory.

So he holds Rose against his shoulder, muffling her just a little against the fabric of his dressing gown, and takes her downstairs to where her bottles are waiting in the refrigerator. He tries not to dwell too long on how calm she is, being fed by him and not her mother, and how the expected ear-drum exploding wailing has not yet begun. The wee one has some lungs on her, and the sense of timing all babies learn fast, and he knows she's just lying in wait.

Still, her whimpering has quietened by the time she pushes the bottle away, and her little fingers are curled into fists, holding onto the flannel of his clothing, and her eyes are half-drawn, close again to sleep.

He feels he's diffused a bomb, saved a city.

He's watched a few too many cartoons late at night and on Saturday mornings already, if that's the analogy he's coming up with.

But Belle insists it's good for the baby, and who is he to argue?

Gently, he rocks Rose in his arms as he carries her upstairs. He tries to set her down, but her eyes fly open and she starts the warning-sobs again, so he sighs – this child will grow into a sociable, perhaps even attention-seeking creature, this he can tell – and carries her back into his room, so at least he can sit in his comfy chair as he holds her.

Rose is asleep within five minutes, curled into his chest with her hands fisted in his pyjamas, and he soon follows suit.

* * *

Belle wakes early, feels the wrongness of the room in moments.

She scrambles from her bed, her stomach twisting with an unknown fear, and runs to the cradle, needing to see her daughter's sleeping face to calm her terror.

She lets out a little cry, every bone in her body breaking, heart torn into tiny shreds: the cradle is empty.

Rose is gone.

She leaves the room at a dead-run, heading for Mr Gold's bedroom, needing him to help her marshal the troops, start the search, and burn child-snatching witches in their wake. Her heart hasn't pounded like this since the morning she ran to the convent, since the last time her world was truly smashed and wrecked and burning.

She's ready to scream and run and fight with her bare hands, as she bursts into the room.

Then stops, every muscle suppressed and entirely still, as her mouth falls open, eyes wide and disbelieving.

For there is her daughter, her precious little thing, safe and sound and fast asleep in Mr Gold's arms. And there's Gold, snoring softly in his armchair, cradling her daughter against his chest like he never plans to let go.

And she will _kill_ him, oh yes; she will have his guts for aeroplane elastic when she's done.

She nearly died this morning, when she thought her child had been taken and carried off into the wind. There are so many out there who would do just that, who would rip Rose from her mother's arms and spirit her away, and he knows that and did this anyway.

She wants to kill him.

She_ wishes_ she wanted to kill him.

But the pair of them are possibly the most beautiful, the most heart-breaking sight she's ever seen, asleep together, dappled in morning light.

Looking at them, she can almost believe that the Sheriff was right, all those weeks ago, when she assumed them father and daughter. She can almost forget that the child's real father is a monster, an ogre without a soul, and that this house was a prison sentence for Rose's first few months.

Instead, she can spin herself a new story, a new history, and bind the three of them together with sunlight and golden thread. She can create a new world, where they are mother and father and beaming baby girl, and where their love is pure and clean and simple in their wood and stained-glass home. Where there are no wolves or witches waiting at the gates to tear them all apart.

Although even in her real world she's doing a decent job of fighting back those predators, one by one.

She crosses the room slowly, padding across the floorboards on her bare feet, and presses a soft kiss to Rose's forehead.

Then, without more than half a second's hesitation, she rises up a little and does the same again, pressing her lips against the top of Gold's head and breathing in his scent of wood-smoke and leather and old, leather-bound books.

Because here, in this room, just for this one brief and shining moment, they are a family.

And so she is slow about slipping back to the doorway, and lingers for a moment, eyes on the pair of them, close to tears she has no intention of examining or understanding, before she slides back around the door and closes it with a soft click behind her.

* * *

Mr Gold is a little disappointed in the town's law enforcement.

It's been a week since he asked the Sheriff – the supposed Saviour, and what a failure of a battle that was shaping up to be – to do one little favour. To track down an actual criminal, and put the cretin where he belongs.

And yet the cells stand empty, and the boy can be spotted every now and then skulking around the streets, and Gold is beginning to wonder if he bet on the right horse.

However, the other option is to go to Regina for help, and that's an impossibility. Not least because he hates no one like he hates her.

Today's visit to the Mayor's office has nothing to do with supplication, with admitting weakness and asking for assistance.

He's here to tell the bitch to leave his girls alone.

So he lets himself in, enjoys the look of annoyed surprise that always graces Regina's features when he shows up uninvited. The same was always true in the old world as well, when he sprung from thin air and appeared before her, offering an easy way out.

"Mr Gold." She greets him, tone flat and unimpressed, "Whatever can I do for you, today?"

"Oh, I don't know, dear." He crosses to her desk, smiles his serpent smile, watches her try to read him. Subtlety was a trait Regina had always lacked. It made her clumsy. "How about answering a few questions for me."

She smirks, inclines her head, "Of course. What's on your mind?"

"When did you become so interested in adoption practices?"

"Excuse me?"

"You never seemed to care much for lost and lonely children in Storybrooke before," he shrugs, "I'm interested to know the roots of your new interest."

She has the nerve to smile, teeth white and gleaming around poisonous red lips, "This is about the French girl."

"This is about you coming to my home and harassing my guests," he replies, without a single note out of place, without a crack in his geniality, and yet there is a blizzard in his words, "It's not good practice, dearie."

He comes to sit in the uncomfortable chair in front of her desk, relaxing as if he's at home, making a point about true dominance and balance of power.

"She's in need of guidance, Mr Gold," her tone is firm, as if he's one of her oblivious, stupid town folk, "And she is a resident of this town. It is my job to provide for all residents, with or without your permission."

"Then keep the electricity running and the drainage working," he almost snaps, almost, "But keep your greedy little fingers out of other people's business."

"Why, Mr Gold," she leans back, laughing at him, "I cannot imagine why you care so much."

"I'm invested in her wellbeing." He doesn't want to give her anything, not one sliver of ammunition against her. But he needs her to leave Belle alone, to keep her poisonous influence away from Rose's innocent little world.

"She's nearly thirty years younger than you, dear." Regina puts on a mask of friendly, maternal care, "Perhaps you should allow someone else to care for her, and allow the child to be placed where she can be safe? You're not, after all, known for your love of children."

Mr Gold is ninety-per cent certain that she knows he remembers. But they've never discussed it, and he doesn't plan to play that card over something so small as his personal happiness. So he inclines his head, and smiles as if he's been half-beaten, and swallows the cursewords that burn at his tongue.

"Be that as it may, both Miss French and her infant are happy and seem to have no plans to leave my home. I would appreciate it if you respected their wishes, if not mine." He stands, leans over, grins into her face and plays his ace, "Please."

The smile falls from her face, and she nods once, eyes curiously blank.

Curses will do that. Deals spun from magic cannot be broken, no matter how far you try to bend them to your will.

He nods, victorious, "Thank you for your time, Madame Mayor. Always a pleasure."

Then he turns, dramatic to the last, and stalks from the room as if he is still a Dark One clad in dragonhide and golden scales, and not the lame and _altogether too soft_ human man he has become.

* * *

Belle has no idea at all what she thinks she's doing.

None whatsoever.

But Rose has grown so much, and Archie mentioned something about family – she got him off the topic quickly, but the thought is still embedded in her mind – and it's time now to go home.

Not _home_ home, the pinkish-red wooden house on the corner by the forest.

No, the house she stops in front of is white, with picket fences and a shop in the downstairs. This is the home she's been running from for almost a decade. This is the home she once swore her daughter would never know.

But still, here she stands, with her baby in the pram and the door closed in front of her, whitewashed wood and frosted glass.

The last time she stood here, she was an angry, sobbing teenager, screaming abuse at her father and clutching her bad-boy lover like he was the only thing that mattered.

Now she is a woman, calm and composed, clutching her daughter because she _is_ the only thing that matters, and for a moment she feels one hundred years old.

Then she takes a deep breath, and rings the doorbell.

It takes hours for someone to answer – it's probably only a minute or so, but her stomach is coiled in snarled and angry knots and Rose's eyes are a little fearful, feeling as she does her mama's shaking fingers. Then Moe French pulls the door open, and glares out unseeingly for a moment.

After a long few seconds, he registers what he's seeing, and stands for a moment just… staring at her. It's a little unnerving, and Belle starts to wonder if this was such a good idea.

It wasn't. She knows it wasn't. But she did it anyway.

The story of her life so far, apparently.

"Hello, papa."

"Isobel?" he's staring at her, eyes narrowed, as if he doesn't believe that she can be real. And then his eyes pan down to Rose, and widen and shoot back to hers, and she waits for the awful moment.

When he calls her a whore, and her daughter a bastard child, and casts them from his doorstep.

She braces herself for the body blow.

"And who is this?" he asks, quietly.

"Papa, this is Rose." She smiles, tries to communicate her hopes, how much she needs him to accept them both, "She's your granddaughter."

He stares down for what feels like days, and Belle holds her breath.

She wants to gather Rose into her blanket, hide her innocent little eyes from the world and run far and fast, hide someplace warm and dark, away from her father's eyes. This was the worst idea she's ever, ever had.

Stupid child, why would she put herself through this again? _Why risk this?_

She's about to leg it, to run and run and keep running, when his eyes meet hers.

They're warm, warmer than they've been since she was sixteen, and filled with tears, "She's beautiful, Izzy." Then his arms, warm and strong and familiar and so completely _home_ are around her, and his tears are in her hair, and she's cradling her daughter between them, sobbing like a lost child into her father's chest.

They go inside, but Moe's arm never leaves her shoulders, and his eyes are always on Rose's.

And she feels softer than she has in years, like the weight of the world has shifted from her shoulders, like the world could end right then and her father would stand between her and oblivion, unshakeable.

It's a childish feeling, naïve and hopeless, but she's missed it more than oxygen.

They sit on her mama's old couch, as close as possible, and Belle hands Rose to her grandfather without a moment's hesitation. The last eight years of separation, their year of anger and hurt and slammed doors, of suspicion and hypocrisy, melt and fall between them.

They are family, and now things are the way the need to be.

Moe holds Rose in his arms like she's made of hand-blown glass, of bone china, like he'll break her if he shifts his fingers wrong.

The man is massive, protective, intimidating, but his hands are delicate, the hands of a man who spent his life among flowers. He _understands_, and of course he does, and Belle cannot remember her anger, her pain, when he already loves the centre of her gravity within minutes of introduction.

"How old is she?"

"Six months and eight days last Thursday," Belle smiles, a watery smile.

"Oh," he nods, but he looks so hurt she wants to curl up and die, "She's a pretty little thing."

"I would have brought her sooner, but…"

"You thought I wouldn't want to see her." He nods, sadly, and Belle's pain recedes a little. Because she did, and with good reason: they'd barely spoken in near on a decade, and their last fight had been ugly and fierce.

Who was to say he would look at Rose and not see his ruined daughter and her good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend?

"You can understand why."

"Yes." He nods, and takes a deep breath, still not meeting her eyes, "You should have come home, you know. I mean: you could have. When you had her."

"No," she shakes her head, "I really couldn't."

"You're living with Mr Gold now. The Mayor came by especially to tell me." His voice is curiously cold, detached. Belle feels a little of her warmth fade away, a little of the old resentment crawl back inside.

"He offered me a place to stay. And I haven't regretted a day of it since the moment I moved in."

It's a lie, but a small one, and she wills it to be true. Perhaps if she wishes hard enough, their new deal will outshine the old, and nothing nefarious need have happened at all.

"You could have come home."

He's still cooing down at her baby, eyes locked on her, and Belle wants her back so badly it physically hurts.

"No. I couldn't. You know that."

"You stormed out of here _eight years_ ago, Isobel. Do you really think I can hold a grudge for that long?"

The anger that boils to the surface, that colours her words, is an old and festering one, "I didn't storm out of anywhere: _you_ threw me out on my ass because I made a few bad decisions."

"You can't understand." He mutters, bitterly, as if she's seventeen again, a foolish and naïve child believing herself a warrior.

"I'm a mother now, papa. I'm an adult. You could have come and _found_ me whenever you damn well pleased, and I never heard a word. You shut me out like I was _shameful_!"

"You shouldn't have had to turn to him."

"I didn't have to." Except she did, and she would rather have jumped off a cliff into the ocean than brought Rose back here, with her tail between her legs because she couldn't hold up her end of their silent war. The lair of an impersonal monster was preferable to this house, haunted with ill will and bad memories.

"Then why did you?"

"Because George spits at me in the street, and Ruby and Granny's place is tiny, and the convent shut me out, and you _abandoned_ me when I needed you." She says, the words boiling and rolling off her tongue faster and faster, unstoppable, flowing with the tears on her cheeks and staining the pale pink upholstery.

Rose sees her mother's distress, and begins to cry, too. Belle takes her back without a word to Moe, and holds her close, rocking her tight and swearing never to let go again.

"I'm sorry, Isobel." He says, and she can see his eyes, wide and pleading, begging her to believe it.

And she wants to, more than anything in the world.

Belle has been strong and solitary for so long, and even now, with Gold so firmly planted at her side, she needs her papa as much as Rose needs her.

She needs him to wrap his arms back around her, and fight off all the monsters; to kiss her forehead at night, and guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow. She needs him to banish every dark thought with a broad, safe smile and a bad joke.

But he hasn't been that man since she was a child herself. Since she watched her hero fall from his pedestal, into a crumpled and dirty heap at her feet.

She was a fool to come here, and expect her statue to be back on its plinth, strong and tall and perfect once more.

She was a fool to think that anything could change overnight.

"I'm not, but I accept your apology," she says, finally, when she has control of her voice, "What did the Mayor say?"

"She wants me to convince you to give her up, and leave that man's home. To come back where you belong." He nods to Rose, whimpering quietly against her mother's shoulder.

She clenches her arms a little tighter, becomes for a moment a lioness ready for battle.

"I won't." he promises, and she's stunned for a moment, "You're a mother, Isobel. And much as I'd like you and Rose to come and stay here, you're a woman with her own mind. No one can take that from you. And I'll murder any bastard who tries."

She smiles, and it's a cracked and broken smile, but it's at least real.

"Could you at least stop by every now and then?" he asks, "I'd like… I'd like to get to know my daughter, and granddaughter, a little better. If that's alright?"

And she nods, even as she cries, because she needs to get to know her father, too.

* * *

He's home late, whistling like he did when he was young, the feeling of a day well-spent settling happily in his bones.

He went to see Regina, and sorted the bitch out once and for all.

And she'd smiled her bitter, poisoned-apple smile, and been forced to comply. He wonders why he didn't think of it sooner.

And then remembers: he can't tell Belle about the power he has over Regina. He can't tell her about the bargain, or the Curse, or the persuasive skills he acquired in the process.

He doesn't want to lie to her, but this is the best way for things to be.

"You sound cheerful," she smiles when she sees him. She's settled on the couch, reading with her legs crossed. Rose is nowhere to be seen, so he assumes she's probably asleep upstairs. The baby monitor on Belle's lap makes a small noise, a baby snuffling in her sleep. He wishes Belle's smile didn't have to be so filled with relief at this little reassurance.

One day, he wants her to live without worrying that someone will steal away her baby.

He wants her to be able to blink without fear.

"Good day, then?" she asks.

"Oh, yes," he grins, and comes to sit next to her.

"What happened?" she asks, and places a finger against her chin, "No, wait, let me guess!" she points at him, a gesture so much a mimic of himself – of _Rumpelstiltskin_, although that's impossible – that he's a little taken aback, "You went and bullied the Mayor and the Sheriff, all in one day!"

"The Mayor deserves anything I can throw at her, dear, you of all people should understand that. And I saw the Sheriff a week ago, not today. Half-marks there, love."

She's glaring at him, the smile gone from her face, and he wonders if gentle humor is really the best response here. "Emma came by here today, asking if I'd seen George around, if he'd threatened me."

"She takes her sodding time, doesn't she?" he mutters, because what good is a Saviour when she can't get around to doing her bloody job?

"Why is she trying to track him down?" there's a dangerous note in her voice, "Who got her involved?"

"Emma will help. She's going to lock George Gaston up for as long as possible."

"For what, exactly?"

"For assault, battery, grievous bodily harm, and vandalism."

Her face doesn't light the way he'd hoped it would: in fact, she's frowning, "But when he gets out… he'll come right for us. He's just going to get angrier."

"He's already attacking young women in the street, Belle," he reasons, "He needs to be put where he can't hurt anyone."

"He'll be inside just long enough to get mad enough to do real damage," she says, her eyes cold and dark, "Yes, thank you."

"What would you have me do?" he asks, annoyed by her lack of gratitude for his actions, "Leave him out there, where he can threaten you whenever he damn well pleases? You still have the _scars_, dear, don't pretend you don't want him to go down for that alone."

"I want him out of my life, and out of Rose's." she replies, jaw tight, as she stands and starts to pace "What happens beyond that is none of my business."

"Then I think a nice jail cell is the best place possible, don't you agree?"

She looks at him without malice, but with a terror she's held for far too long, "If he is sent to prison for what he did to us, then he'll _always_ remember it. He'll come back: he's too stupid to be able to move on. If we just let it go, he'll stop eventually."

He can't believe how naïve, how dense she can be even after all she's been through, "He's a _father_, Belle." He says, standing to take her hands, trying to soothe her "Do you know what that means? He'll never forget that, he'll always come after Rose, _always_."

He doesn't expect the anger that flashes into her eyes, as she tears her hands from his, "How dare you? He's no more Rose's father than Archie Hopper is! He happened to be there when I got pregnant, and _that's it_."

"He doesn't see it that way."

"And that's why I want him far, far away from us, preferably without any memory of Rose at all. I don't need him to keep being _reminded_ of what I did to him, of what he feels an entitlement to."

"He has no hold over you: he wouldn't be able to claim custody from you with a criminal record and a domestic violence conviction."

"He doesn't have to: brick through the window ring any bells?" she's almost hysterical, running hands through her thick dark hair, trembling from head to toe, eyes wet and wide and wild.

"Belle, Belle," he tries to soothe her, wraps arms around her as if she's Rose, but she's too far gone: she pushes him away, tearing around the room like a caged animal. "He'll be gone. And you'll be free to live your life."

She whirls to face him; "You had _no right_ to go see the Sheriff without my permission. _No right at all_."

"I'm sorry, dear, but I can do as I please." He smiles, all needles and nastiness, Rumpelstiltskin shining through. She doesn't even flinch, and he isn't surprised; she's Belle and she's strong as old leather and iron nails, a warrior in full armour, and treating her as if she is anything less is lying through action.

"Not when your help is unneeded. I can deal with George, one way or the other. Rose is _my_ responsibility."

"What happened today, Belle?" he asks, quietly: this anger isn't all about him. He hasn't seen her this wound up in all the time he's known her, and he needs to know why.

"Nothing." She turns away from him, goes to leave, but he's had enough of this. He catches her arm – she could pull away, he wouldn't stop her – and she turns back to him, and looks so damn broken that the world stops making any sense at all.

"What happened?" he puts all the affection, the tenderness, he needs for her to understand in his voice. She isn't alone, and he isn't going to stop helping her, and she has to understand that.

"I went to see my father." She replies, and a hundred disparate and jagged pieces fall into place.

"And?" he prompts, heart in his throat, thumb tracing idle circles on the inside of her wrist.

"He… he wishes I'd moved in with him. He acted as if he'd given me a goddamn choice."

Her voice is so hard, so angry: angrier than she should ever be. His own fear of being alone, of her leaving with Rose to her family home, the place where she should have been all this time, can wait.

Right now his Belle is _sobbing_, and his arms have wrapped around her, and that's the only thing that could possibly matter at all.

But she's breaking away, and staring at him, wide-eyed and fearful, and she tears from the room as if her life depends upon it.

He hears the door slam, and knows he isn't welcome.

Hours later, when he comes to bed, he passes her room and still hears her sobbing. It takes all he has not to break their final wall and go inside, invade her safe space, to offer what comfort he can.

Her pain is his pain, and this hurts like blazes.

But he's half the problem, and he knows her too well: she needs time to cry alone, to fall apart without someone to watch and see and remember. So she can put her armour back on, and come out the calm, competent, tough-as-nails woman she needs to be.

So he leaves her to her agony, and limps to bed with his knee aching like it hasn't in months.


	9. Chapter 9

The call comes after another two days of inching and skirting around the edges.

Belle doesn't like not being friends with Mr Gold; not at all. But he was still wrong, and she's still right, and until the git stands up and apologises there's nothing she can do.

They revert to their old ways, eating breakfast in silence, edging around each other in the hallways. But where once he was invisible, a possible inconvenience, more a theory than an actual man, he is now inescapable. He's always right where she needs to be, stood in the way, and it's _awkward_.

Two days stretch like two years, and Belle had forgotten how it felt to be lonely.

It had been hard to be lonely when he was sweet, when he was staying up late nights with her daughter held between them, and wrapping an arm around her when she was cold, and making stupid, wicked little jokes that made her laugh even despite herself.

A world without that, without those little wonders that make up her closest friend, is dark, bleak and icy cold.

But then, nine pm on Friday night, the phone rings.

Gold answers: Belle still isn't comfortable answering the phone in this house when he's here. Mainly because it's never, ever for her – even Astrid calls her cell - and his calls sometimes upset her.

"I see. Well, thank you, Sheriff. We'll be by in the morning."

He hangs up the phone, and just stands there a moment, leaning heavily on his cane. Belle watches out of the corner of her eye, hoping against hope that he'll explain without her having to ask, and then vanish somewhere.

But, of course, he doesn't, and the curiosity breaks her before the silence can him. "What was that about?"

"That was the Sheriff," he says, stating the obvious, and Belle rolls her eyes.

"Yes, what about?"

"She's tracked down George Gaston. Hauled him in for questioning: he's locked in a holding cell right now." His voice is carefully calm, neutral, obviously trying not to crow '_I told you so'_.

"Oh." She nods, not sure how to feel. She didn't want this – _doesn't_ want this – she needs him to be free so he can forget about her.

But she knows he'll never leave Storybrooke, because for a rebellious, brooding bad-boy type he's remarkably scared of the unknown. Perhaps, if they're all stuck here anyway, it's better for him to be behind bars.

"He can't come after us." She whispers, and the words taste like sunshine on her tongue, "We're safe."

Because she's told the Mother Superior to back off, and the Mayor's left them alone for the past week or so, and George is in prison, and Gold is…

Gold is smiling at her with the warmest eyes she's ever seen. She could _drown_ in that warmth, in this fondness and affection, and die happy. She rises from the sofa, carefully, slowly, and crosses to him, her grin widening to match his own with every step.

"We're safe." She says it again, louder, and then again, until she's whooping and laughing and unable to keep it in, giggling like a child.

She throws her arms around him, holding him close, and then they're dancing around the room in a strange little waltz, mindful of his leg, trying not to hit anything because neither of them know what they're doing.

She knows that she's the first one to lean up, to kiss him full on the lips and damn the consequences.

Love doesn't mean that no one has to apologise. Love doesn't mean that he had a right to do what he did, or that she won't worry and fret and scream about it later, when they all go to Hell in a wicker hand basket.

But it does mean that there are no more words needed, that his hands are in her hair and she's kissing him like the world is ending, with every scrap of hope and joy and relief she has in her.

She runs her tongue along his bottom lip; sweeps it into his mouth and drinks in his flavour, the spicy familiarity she's come to need so much.

She feels him groan as he opens for her, as his hands slip from her hair and come to her hips, dragging her against him. She holds him as close as she can, hands cupping his face, body pressed as hard against him as is possible.

They have to break apart for air, and she's gasping, but her breath catches again as his lips meet the corner of her jaw, as they move down her neck, spreading delicate butterfly kisses on sensitive flesh. He seems to have lost whatever restraint, whatever self-control, has been holding him back all this time.

They fall down onto the couch, and she's somehow beneath him, and he's grinning down at her smugly, proud of how this has turned out.

"We're safe." She beams, and he leans down to nip her bottom lip, rub his nose against hers in a gesture that's so innocent, so childish and sweet, that it melts her further than anything else he's done so far.

She giggles, strokes his hair with her hand and smiles as he leans into her palm.

Then he's leaning down, and kissing her again, but softer this time, tender and gently teasing, nibbling the edges of her mouth and stroking her tongue with his.

His hands are all over her, working down her torso and under her shirt to explore the skin beneath. Her stomach muscles clench as his fingertips ghost over her belly, as they pull back to the hem of her t-shirt and pull up, revealing her midriff.

She's breathing hard as he pulls back and looks down at her, as their eyes meet.

And she's nervous, of course she is, she can barely breathe at all for butterflies going insane in her stomach, her skin unbearably hot and tight, humming with something not unlike electricity, like magic.

Because Mr Gold is looking at her like she's the moon and the stars, and then he's glancing down, eyes widening as he takes in her scars.

She wonders if now is the moment when he stops. Perhaps this reminder, this eternal memento from her life _before_, will prompt him to pull back and away, go back to small touches around the very edges of who she is.

Perhaps they will disgust him, and he will be unable to desire someone who is so clearly marked as someone else's victim.

His eyes, when they meet hers again, are full of questions, of doubts. But when he speaks, it is not to push her away, but to ask, "Are you sure about this, love?"

It's a stupid question, really, when she's spread out beneath him, smiling like her face is going to split in two; when his thumbs are rubbing absent little circles into the flesh of her hips, and she's forgetting how to keep pulling air into her lungs, how to survive without his lips on her skin.

She nods, touched somewhere deep and warm and important by his concern.

He grins to match her own, and leans down to kiss her smiling mouth, before breaking away and moving down her body, running his lips across her exposed belly and kissing every scar, every little stretch mark, every ugly blemish to her pale skin.

She feels like crying, though she doesn't know why. She hasn't been so happy in what feels like a lifetime.

She doesn't understand how he can see those scars, those reminders of how _damaged_ she truly is, and still look at her like she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. She can feel tears rolling down her cheeks, slow and sweet, tears of joy and relief and a kind of love she has no idea of how to contain.

She has to pull him back up, has to kiss him long and deep, show him exactly what he's doing to her, exactly how perfect he makes her feel.

She wraps her arms around his torso, holds him against her as hard as she possibly can. She never wants an inch of distance between them, never again.

But then there's a noise from the table, and she tears her mouth from his to stare at the baby monitor, as the sound of Rose crying bursts through the moment.

She laughs, even as she's still weeping, and feels his rumble of laughter vibrate from his chest, through her body.

"That girl of yours, she has some timing," he mutters, as she pushes him up and swings her legs over the side of the sofa.

"Yes, she does." She agrees, as she tidies herself up a bit and pulls her shirt down.

She smiles at him, giggling like a teenager caught necking on the sofa, like someone with a special little secret, and leans over to press a soft kiss to his cheek. She places her palm there, rubs his cheekbone softly with her thumb, and then rises to go attend to her daughter.

Rose is hungry, and Belle gathers her in her arms for her nightly feed, lightly stroking the top of her dark little head as she suckles.

She can sense another presence in the room; feel him even as he stands in the doorway, watching this moment between her and her daughter. It feels right, having him here, as a part of their strange little family.

She pretends not to see him, to see what he will do.

It's all very well her imagining him as Rose's father, wishing that he were more than just employer and housemate, friend and almost-lover. He needs to see it for himself, understand how closely entwined he is with the pair of them, how firmly he is theirs and they are his.

She almost holds her breath; convinced for just a second that he'll move on, leave her to it. That she'll crawl into bed, with Rose settled once more, and lie awake all night alone and remembering his mouth on her skin, soothing all her scars.

But then the floorboards creak, and his cane taps on the bare floor, and there are a pair of strong arms around her waist, pulling her and her daughter gently back against his chest.

"Is she alright, love?" his voice is quiet, deep in her ear, and she shivers.

"Yes, just hungry," she replies, as Rose stops feeding and moves back, yawning and opening her wide blue eyes.

Gold presses a soft kiss to the back of Belle's neck, murmurs "You're so beautiful when you're motherly." And kisses her again, follows it with another and another, until Belle is leaning on him for support, cradling Rose close against her to remind herself not to fall.

"Not in front of the baby," she murmurs, but she's smiling, and leaning into his kisses.

"Baby doesn't mind," he replies, and she feels his smirk against her skin as he lifts one hand from her waist and gently strokes Rose's cheek, "Do you, sweet?"

Rose sighs and settles, her little fist settling around Gold's finger.

She pretends not to notice the way he stills completely, the look of complete astonishment she can see in her peripheral vision. Because this is a moment between almost-father and baby girl, and she's just a vessel, a conveyance, something needed but somewhat _in the way_.

She doesn't mind at all.

Then Rose's hand relaxes as she slips into sleep, and Belle breaks away from Gold to lean down and place her in her cradle.

Then she turns, smiling through the darkness, and takes his hand in hers as she presses her mouth to his, just once, just softly. He's smiling a kind of stunned, incredulous smile as he leads her from the room, and along the twelve steps – she's counted them, the silly little girl in her unable to resist knowing how far apart they truly are – into his bedroom.

* * *

For the first time in three centuries, Gold wakes up in a shared bed.

And for the first minute or so, he doubts that there can be a happier creature in this world or the last. Even though her weight is cutting off the circulation to his hand, even though her hair is tickling his face: he wakes up with his arms around Isobel French, and the world is a bright and cheerful place.

Then his mind starts working again, and a heavy lump of something that's not quite guilt settles in his stomach.

He lost control.

It had been inevitable, really: he had never been brave enough to hold himself back, never been capable of real nobility or honour. And in the end, that always was his downfall.

And so now she would wake up, and look at him and try to smile while she ran from his sight and hid in shame.

He'd probably just destroyed the best thing in his life, and all because he couldn't resist her when she was beaming and dancing in his arms.

But she hadn't left in the night; she had slept by his side.

So that was something.

He feels her stirring, beginning to wake, and he waits for the consternation and horror.

She rolls over, shifts so that she's facing him, and he's a little surprised that her eyes are already open, heavy-lidded but bright. She's smiling a sleepy kind of smile, and he feels her muscles stretching as she makes herself more comfortable, "Morning."

"Good morning, dear," he smiles to cover his astonishment, but he doesn't think he's doing a great job of it, "Did you sleep well?"

"Hmmm," she thinks about it, "No, not really. Not for long enough, anyway," she smirks at him, "_Someone_ kept me awake."

He feels a mild amount of guilt over that: they'd been up hideously late, and she was sleep-deprived enough as it was. But then, he'd finally had her in his bed, and she was so warm and sweet and willing, and he'd wanted her for longer than he could even believe. There was no way he was sacrificing one moment of that for mere sleep.

"You could sleep for a while longer, you know," he moves his arm from under her, uses it to prop his head up so he can see her properly, and_ oh_, she's beautiful when she's all sleep-tousled and satisfied, "I can leave you in peace."

He expects her to nod, gratefully, and roll back away from him.

But instead, she shakes her head, hums reproachfully and wraps her arms firmly around his shoulders, "Or not?" he asks, eyebrows high in surprise.

"No, I don't like that plan." She pulls him down to her and kisses him slowly, languidly, her movements still sluggish with sleep.

He laughs against her lips, a laugh of pure joy and relief that she isn't running, that he didn't make a massive mistake last night, that as completely insane as it seems, she wants to be here as much as he wants her here.

"Is the bed uncomfortable, dear?" he asks, with teasing concern, "Do you not want to sleep here?"

"The bed's fine: I could sleep here all day."

"Then is it the light? We could draw the curtains better."

"I don't want to sleep," she smiles, "Done enough of that. You're staying where I can see you."

"Oh, alright then," he grins as wide as he ever has, and covers her mouth with his, his kiss deep and thorough, leaving her breathless and beaming, "I don't have any problems with that."

"Good," she purrs, stroking his hair with her slim little fingers, the small motions turning him to something soft and malleable in her hands.

Of course, that's the moment – right when he's leaning back over her, right when his hands are starting to stray downwards, to touch much more interesting places than just her shoulders, the sides of her collarbone – when Rose decides to start crying.

Gold loves that child as if she were his own – stupid as it seems, impossible as it truly is for him to love anything half as much as he will always love Bae – but _Gods_, in this moment she is the most annoying creature to ever be born.

Belle looks up at his entirely pissed-off face, and bursts out laughing.

"It's not funny, dear," he argues, sighing in frustration, slumping down and burying his face in the curve of her neck.

"It is, a little bit," she counters, petting his hair with a strangely familiar kind of affection, "Come on, it's time to get back to real life."

He groans into her skin, clutches her tighter against him, "Real life involves you and clothing. Not a fan."

"There's a baby in the next room who needs her mama to feed her," she reminds, gently, as Rose's cries grow to wails, "You could make us breakfast?"

He concedes that Rose doesn't appear to intend to stop any time soon, so he rolls over, onto his back, and lets Belle shift away and sit up, pulling on some kind of clothing before padding out of the room.

He stares at the ceiling for a long minute, remembering how to breathe, how to function with Belle anywhere but right next to him.

Unfortunately, the real world still exists, complete with dangers and sharp teeth. More happened last night than just her falling into his arms, and kissing him until he couldn't see, and the feeling of every inch of her skin mapped beneath his fingers.

Last night, he gained something valuable, something infinitely precious.

And who knew better than Mr Gold, who had once been Rumpelstiltskin, how much harsher, colder, and crueller the world could be once you had something to lose?

He suddenly doesn't want her out of his sight for any longer than is absolutely necessary: he rises quickly, finds his pyjamas and robe scattered on the floor and dresses as rapidly as possible. He grabs his cane and follows her down the hallway, glances into her room just to check, just to make sure that she hasn't somehow vanished into thin air.

But no, there she is, cradling her daughter in her arms, feeding her in the morning light.

Wearing only the red dress shirt he'd worn the night before, hair wild and long around her shoulders.

But much as he'd love to stage a repeat performance of last night – and _oh_, how he'd love to do just that – he leaves her to it. Because this is an important thing, here, something small and fragile and personal to mother and daughter, and Belle must be starving anyway.

So he backs away quietly, and goes downstairs to make pancakes and relive every moment of the last nine hours in his mind.

He files away every memory, every gasp and whisper and moan, every slide of her skin against his, for the day when he'll need them most. He's not naïve enough to believe that this beautiful little reprieve can ever last. Nothing lasts, not even skies and worlds and castle walls.

He's just serving up when she comes to lean in the doorway, watching him with a fond smile and one hand in her soft, tangled hair.

"You look miserable," she notes, "What's wrong?"

He flashes the best smile he can manage, which is a pretty decent effort considering how she's smiling like a lover and wrapped in only one of his shirts. "Nothing, dear. Breakfast?"

She narrows her eyes, but her smile doesn't waver and she accepts her food, watching him carefully. She doesn't believe him, and why would she, when she knows him so well and he's clearly not telling the whole truth.

"Rose alright?" he asks, as they settle themselves: she at the end, him right beside her, the first time they've ever eaten without a whole damn table between them.

"Yeah, she took a moment but she's okay."

"Not suffering from sleeping a night alone?" he asks, teasingly, digging into his pancakes as he discovers all of a sudden that he's _ravenous_.

She sticks her tongue out at him, giggling, and he's almost glad they're both eating, and he can't lean across and kiss her, because he knows he'd never be able to stop.

He'd have to have her right here, on the table, and they have things to do this morning.

They actually manage to make it through breakfast without anything untoward happening – although it's impossible not to kiss her long and deep when she has chocolate sauce all around her mouth, and her lips taste like strawberries and syrup – and he lets her go back to her own room to dress rather than insisting upon helping.

One day, he thinks, they'll be able to spend whole _weeks_ with no clothing at all.

But today, they have to go and give witness statements against George Gaston, and try to organise their lives into some semblance of safety and order. He has to be sure that no one can come after them and tear them apart, even if it means sacrificing a few hours of domestic bliss.

Belle calls Astrid to come over and babysit. She doesn't want to ask again, but she can't stand the idea of having Rose in the same room as her biological father, and Gold can understand that.

So the little nun comes over, and gives him a smile on the way in that tells him that it's true what people say: women tell each other everything.

He'd thought that, maybe, since Sister Astrid is a woman of God, Belle would keep her thoughts to herself: apparently not. He wonders exactly what is going through her head, then Belle shoots him an amused little look and he realises that he probably doesn't want to know.

They hold hands all the way to the Sheriff's office, a small and simple sign that everything in the whole world has shifted and changed.

They talk about silly, meaningless, trivial things: her plans for baby-proofing, and intention to force him to help; his work, and her belief that he needs someone to sort through the chaos of his storerooms and make some sense of the mess.

They arrive laughing and teasing, the world falling and settling itself to rights.

Perhaps things would have been different, he muses as they walk, had they met before. If he had known her for longer than five minutes before the Curse, if they had had time to get to know each other as they do now.

But there is something to be said for knowing her only now, for meeting and dancing around and making love on human terms, as something closer to equals.

Being Dark One had been the necessary thing – the _only_ thing – for centuries. But it was never something he would miss.

The Dark One would have seen his pounding heart and singing nerves, his inability to deny his Belle a thing, his affection for her child sleeping soundly in his home, and roared and screamed, driven her from his home.

But Mr Gold is not Rumpelstiltskin, not anymore, not really, not since Belle came along and made him behave like a human man once more.

He wouldn't let the Dark One drive her and Rose away the way he did Baelfire.

He promises that with every step, as he opens the door for her and ushers her inside, as she sweeps a mocking little curtsey and he bows like a knight of old.

But the thought dies in his head when they cross the corridor and enters the Sheriff's office, and he sees Regina and Emma standing there, staring into an empty cell with its door swinging open, arguing in hushed tones.

They spin to face Belle and Mr Gold as they enter, and Emma's face is a picture of shock and guilt. Regina's, however, is calm, her Mayor-in-a-crisis face. The face that tells him unequivocally that the crisis is of her design.

"We're here to give our statements?" Belle says, in a small voice, because anyone can tell what has happened here.

"I'm afraid, Miss French, that that will have to wait." Regina folds her arms, and Gold can see her resisting the urge to smirk.

"Why, what happened?"

"He escaped." Emma's voice is tight, apologetic, worried, "Isobel, George escaped. We're going to look for him as soon as we know how he did it."

And oh, Gold _knows_ how he did it. Of course he does: he's looking right at the woman who gave him the key.

Regina just stands, wishes Emma good luck, and has the nerve to pat Belle on the shoulder as she sidles on past.

"I'll be back in a moment, love." He tells Belle, leaving her to talk to Emma as he chases after Regina and tries not to look like it. "Wait a moment, Madame Mayor."

She turns, looks completely delighted to see him, eyes dark and dancing merry, a predator with a wounded kill, "Mr Gold. Whatever is the matter?"

"Oh, I think you know."

"I'm sure I don't. There is a criminal on the loose, Mr Gold, perhaps you should be attending to your… friend."

"She's rather distraught," he tries not to grit his teeth, keep his tone light and mild, "But there're more important matters."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"I wonder what George Gaston will say when he's asked who gave him the key."

"As do I: law enforcement is clearly rather lax around here these days, such a pity."

He smiles a tight, threatening little smile, "When he confesses, how long are you planning to let the boy live?"

"Well, that's quite an accusation, Mr Gold." She folds her arms, "what kind of a monster do you think I am?"

"I know _exactly_ what kind of monster you are, Mayor Mills. And don't ever doubt it."

"Well," she smiles, "I'll tell you what. If you really think I would do something so terrible, why don't you prove it?"

She smiles her poison-apple smile, all teeth and violent menace. Then she laughs, turns, and sweeps out like the Evil Queen she truly is, hidden oh so poorly behind her business suit.


	10. Chapter 10

Belle doesn't wait for Gold to come and meet her. She listens to Emma's apologies, her assurances that they will find him and bring him back in as soon as possible, in a kind of comatose daze.

She runs home as fast as her feet will carry her, unheeding of the stares she attracts.

The world had been perfect, fine, shining and whole just five minutes ago.

Now it's back to its old chaos and disarray, and everything is falling down around her. She needs her home, a cool and dark hole to hide in, and her daughter warm and safe in her arms.

Astrid cries out in concern when Belle bursts in the front door and runs up the stairs, two at a time. She's by Rose's cradle within seconds, and has the baby in her arms, holding her as tight as she can against her and trembling, rubbing Rose's back as if she's the one who needs comfort.

"Belle?" Astrid is quiet in the doorway, uncertain, "Belle what happened?"

It takes her a moment to be able to speak, and when she does her voice is hoarse and strangled, trying not to sob, "Nothing, nothing, it's fine."

"No, it's not." Astrid's worry is tainted with genuine fear, and it only makes things worse: this is her problem, and no one can save them, not forever, not permanently, "Belle, what happened? Was it George?"

"He's gone," she whispers, after a long moment, "He got away."

"George… wait, I thought Sheriff Swan caught him?"

"She did." Belle really doesn't want to talk about this, but Astrid's worried little hand is on her shoulder, and she needs a friend more than anything in the universe, "But somehow he escaped. He's out there right now, and he'll be here sooner or later."

"What're you going to do?"

The only thing she could do: Belle was going to run.

She couldn't be safe here, any more than she could have been safe with her father, or in the convent. She needs to get out of Storybrooke altogether, however daunting the prospect.

"I have to go." She murmurs, and suddenly everything is a flurry of action. She places Rose in her little car seat, and her eyes follow her mama around the room as she grabs her duffel bag from under the wardrobe and starts to throw clothes inside, grabbing blindly at soft piles of cloth and hurling them inside with no pause for thought.

"Belle?" Astrid watches her as if she's lost her mind, wringing her hands, "Belle, what're you doing?"

She grabs a handful of Rose's baby clothes and stuffs them in too, along with a couple of books, and runs across to her underwear drawer, caught halfway by Astrid's firm grip on her forearms, "Belle!" her voice cracks, harder than Belle has ever heard it, "What are you _doing_?"

"I have to get out of here…" she's trying not to sob, but her face is too hot and the tears start coming and suddenly she can't stop, "We- we have to go. Now."

"No, you don't. You're safe here, Belle, you always have been."

She shakes her head, swallowing down her tears, "No, not anymore. Not now. He'll come for us, Astrid, he's going to come and we can't stop him and-"

"Isobel!" Astrid looks like she's going to smack her; Belle has never seen her so angry, "Calm down, okay? He can't hurt you anymore."

She shakes her head, hysterical, unable to breathe, "Yes, he can. He's already tried."

"And Gold stopped him."

"He can't stop him forever. We have to run, Astrid, so _get out of my way_!"

She shakes herself free, and hauls her duffel over her shoulder, grabs Rose in her car seat in her other hand and pushes Astrid aside, making for the stairs.

Nothing matters now: everything becomes an obstacle to overcome. Astrid runs after her, but Belle pays no mind, doesn't hear her calls for reason, to slow down and talk things through. There's nothing left to talk about, and Belle was a fool for thinking anything different.

All she's ever done, all she's ever been good for, is running and hiding.

And although she knows it's stupid, knows it's _wrong_, she can't help but think that allowing herself to settle down, to find one bolthole and stay there, to love someone who was no blood of hers, somehow caused this.

This world doesn't allow for safe havens and happy endings.

Belle is a rabbit, and rabbits don't lie in the sun or fight with teeth and claws. Rabbits are soft and fragile: rabbits _run_.

Astrid tries to stand in the kitchen door and bar her way, as Belle ransacks the fridge, grabs all of Rose's spare bottles as well as a few snacks for Belle herself. She's shut down, panic switching her to autopilot. Collect supplies; get out of the door; and head for the hills.

So she doesn't hear Astrid's commands for her to stop, or Rose's panicked crying as she watches her mama slowly lose her mind.

But she does notice when there're a pair of larger, warmer hands on her shoulders, and she's forced to stop by a suit that won't move.

"Belle!" Gold's voice cuts through her hysteria, and she looks into his face with wide and glassy eyes, "Stop!"

"I have to run," her voice sounds alien, dead and numb, "We have to run, so _move_."

"No. You're staying right here." His voice is firm, unyielding, and all she wants to do is hold onto it and use it as a shield, let him take every weight from her shoulders and win all the battles that she's too scared to fight.

"He'll find us."

"He's not getting within a hundred miles of you while I'm breathing, do you understand me?"

Astrid comes from behind her and gently takes Rose's car seat from her hand. She puts it on the ground, and scoops the baby up, trying to comfort her. Belle barely hears or feels any of it: she's too busy trying to find a way around Gold, and out the door.

"He's going to come for us." She whimpers, and Gold brings one hand from her shoulder to her cheek, brushes aside a tear with his thumb.

"That as may be, but who says he'll succeed? This is your home, our castle. You're safe here."

And she wants to believe it, so badly it hurts.

But she can't. Even here, George could throw more stones through the windows, or kick down the door. She would never, never be safe, and she was amazed that she could ever have believed otherwise.

But still, she stopped struggling, and relaxed her arms, letting her duffel bag fall to the floor at her feet. She let her mind go blank when he kissed her, all passion and sweetness and comfort, soothing her panic as she melted into his arms, clinging on for dear life.

The next few hours pass like days.

Astrid melts away, confident that Belle will be okay with Gold there and suddenly desperate to get back to the cool confines of the convent. Gold spends his time calling around, threatening his tenants, asking for any information about George's location, about where he had been seen.

Belle just curls on the sofa, Rose on her lap, and tries not to think.

She doesn't know how she ended up under the dining room table, but she knows it feels better than sitting on the couch, all exposed and vulnerable.

_Yes_, she thinks, as she settles Rose on her cross-legged lap and pulled out her book, _this feels better_. The tablecloth makes it a secret little den, where she cannot see nor be seen by the outside world: a place for her and her family, warm and safe.

She's startled when the cloth moves, and a smiling face appears, "Ah, Belle?"

Gold looks entirely bemused, and Belle chews her lip, "Yes?"

"Why are you under the table?"

"I… don't know. Felt like the right thing to do."

"Alright…" he's giving her a look, like she's lost her mind.

"Just… let me stay here, okay? It feels safer down here."

"It's going to be alright, you know." He says, as he sits down properly and stretches out his bad leg, "There's no need to hide."

"There's always a need to hide." She replies, and strokes the top of Rose's head, needing the reassurance of her daughter, safe and well and there with her: she's more scared than she's been in months.

"Well, is there at least room for one more?"

He cracks a broad and irresistible smile, and here, in her safe, warm little cave, she can smile back. She nods, shifts aside a little to make room for him, and he scoots under the table so he's next to her, one arm around her shoulders.

He presses a kiss to her cheek, and rests his head on top of hers, so she's slumped against him, head on his shoulder. And for the tiniest moment, nothing that happened today is true, and they're back in his bed, warm and dappled in sunlight, and the world is kind and peaceful.

They eat dinner there, huddled under the dining room table, and it's late when Gold finally complains of a cramp in his bad leg and helps Belle out, and they stand up straight for the first time in hours.

It's dark outside, which strangely manages to make her less scared of what could be out there. With curtains drawn and blinds down, golden light warming every beam and corner of this warm little house, it's almost like being under the table, like their den has just expanded and moulded to fit a larger space.

She lays Rose to sleep, and she almost sees her own anxiety, her own mind-numbing fear reflected in her little daughter's eyes. But of course she doesn't, of course Rose cannot truly understand a thing that's going on.

Still, the idea that George could scare someone other than Belle herself, that the terror he brings in his wake could pass on to her child, twists something painful deep inside her.

Gold doesn't try to lead her from the cradle side, seems to understand without words that this is where she needs to be, tonight.

She doesn't know how he can possibly understand so much about this, unmarried, childless man that he is, but she's thankful for it all the same.

She doesn't focus on the loneliness when she curls down to sleep, when she balls herself into the smallest little shape she can under the covers and tucks her head down, a protective little shell. Perhaps it's better that she's alone: perhaps this is a state she needs to relearn, a pain she needs to re-acclimatise to.

But then he's there, minutes or hours after she's drifted from watching Rose and into her bed, an uncertain shape in the darkness. And he must have limped those twelve steps, for there is no cane to be seen, and he looks oddly small by her bedside, almost fragile, awkward angles and plaid pyjamas.

She just rolls over, and awkwardly pats her vacated space with one hand.

She feels the bed dip as he clambers under the covers, and then he is there, right there, his arm slung across her waist, body curved around hers.

And it's not a perfect fit, because no one could be: people are not puzzle pieces to be slotted neatly together. There are places where his arm is a little too warm, where his knee is a little sharp behind her own.

But it's still the best thing in the world, and maybe those little discomforts only exist to remind her that this is real, that he is _here_. To confirm that this is imperfect reality and not some utopian, halcyon dream of perfect safety and untainted love.

* * *

He's not sure what made him take such a stupid little risk.

Because despite all that had happened the night of the arrest, despite the vivid memories of her lips under his, open and inviting, and her breathy little cries in his ear, and the sensation of her perfect skin shivering under his fingers, this is still a very delicate situation.

It was one thing to make love in his bed, in a daze born of released tension and unbelievable relief. It is quite another to share a bed in a time of fear and worry, when the world was falling down around her ears.

But she rolls over to make room for him, and her fingers weave between his where his hand rests on her stomach, and her tense muscles seem to relax gradually the longer they lie there, the further she curls into him as she drifts off to sleep.

He pretends not to notice the tear tracks on her face, the redness of her skin. If she has been crying alone, it means he's not supposed to know.

He doesn't notice as he falls asleep, doesn't know anything until he feels her shift suddenly, the motion jolting him into semi-consciousness, "Everything alright, love?" he murmurs, looking down with bleary eyes into a pair of turquoise-blue ones, wide and awake.

"Why do you care so much?" she asks, absent hand caressing his cheek, and there's such wondrous doubt in her tone that he's suddenly intensely angry at the whole _fucking_ world.

She's _Belle_, and she's beautiful and so much braver than she knows, and she shouldn't even have to ask the question.

"Because…" he sighs, tries to think of how to phrase this without telling her everything, without scaring her with nonsense about the Curse, without poisoning her with Rumpelstiltskin and deals and dark, dark magic. "Because I had a child, once, a son. And I lost him."

She looks like she's about to die, she's suddenly so sad, and her arms wrap around him like the warmest, sweetest little vice. "Oh." She clings to him for a moment, and he soaks up the comfort, the understanding and warmth that radiates from her skin like it's sunlight, like oxygen. "Oh, God, I'm so, so sorry."

"It's alright," he lies, because of course it's not, of course Bae is the one love, the one awful and shameful memory, he can never, ever be strong enough to carry, "It was a long, long time ago."

"How did it happen?" she asks.

_The fucking blue fairy stuck her nose where it wasn't wanted, and I was too much of a bloody stupid coward to do a damn thing to stop her, _he wants to answer, but he can't, of course he can't, so instead he says, "I… I lost him. He slipped away from me, there's not much more to tell." He sighs, braces himself against pain he knows will come from even thinking his next words, "I suppose he's out there, somewhere, living a normal life. He could be happy, and I'll never know."

He's not crying.

Mr Gold doesn't cry into his lover's hair in the dead of night, over a boy who has been long gone and lost for nigh on three hundred years.

But if some drops of moisture fall on her chestnut curls, then he won't deny ownership.

"Let's hope," she whispers, and it's completely not what he expected to hear. But yes, of course, _yes_, "Let's hope he's happy. If nothing else."

Gold would rather Bae be happy and safe and on the other side of the universe than miserable, cold and alone, but by his side. And it's with a huge amount of guilt that he realises that, back in that village, when this really mattered and Bae was before him, the opposite was true.

No, Gold would _never_ miss being the Dark One.

"What… what was his name?"

Gold takes a deep, ragged breath, and closes his eyes. Because he's a coward, and he hasn't said this one word in eternity, and now is the time to be brave, "Baelfire. Bae."

"That's beautiful," she hums, running sweetly soothing circles on his back with her palms, and how is this amazing creature even _here_, comforting him for his hurt three centuries past when her own world is so fractured and broken? "Family name?"

"Yes, I suppose. It was common where I came from."

Past tense, because those lowlands, those rivers, even that sky, are long gone and past, destroyed by his hand.

_By the curse that was supposed to find his family._

Magic is a terrible, tricky, mighty thing. It has a mind of its own, and an awful sense of warped humour.

And with that thought, he wants to rage and scream. He wants to force Belle away from him, and storm from the room, smash everything in the whole damn town, and tear the whole world apart searching for his son. He wants to judge her as a distraction, thrown in his way by the same forces that want to keep him from succeeding, want to keep Bae lost and lonely in this strange, strange world.

For a brief and horrible second, he wants to _hurt_ her.

But he catches himself, and stops. For the first time in his long, long life, he does the brave thing, and hopes to all the Gods that bravery will follow. He looks down at Belle's head, cradled against his shoulder, and murmurs something against her hair.

"I love you."

Because that is what you say when you find your family. This is the way it is done.

She sighs and shifts against him, and he thinks that perhaps the poor, tired little thing is asleep, that maybe his admission will go unheard and unnoticed.

But then she's looking up at him, and leaning up to kiss him and it's like all the stars and every moment of sweetness and magic in the _Universe_, distilled into one moment of touch. "I love you, too."

Then she curls into him, and he's holding her so close he thinks they might merge in the night into one person, and they fall asleep huddled together under the covers, all warmth and safety in a world of ice queens and dragons.

* * *

Gold is gone when Belle wakes, but since a glance at her clock tells her that it's already 10am, she guesses he must have gone to work already.

Rose is quiet, just stares up at her when she goes to check on her, and Belle realises with a small amount of wonder that Gold must have fed and changed her while she slept. It's an even greater surprise when she realises that she doesn't mind at all.

But then, she's admitted that she loves him, that she's _in love_ with him, and there's no one in the world she'd rather be Rose's father.

The horrors of yesterday seem distant and tiny this morning, and she carries Rose around the house, sweeping her in a little dance that has her beaming, giggling in her mama's arms. Today the world is fine and shining, and Rose is happy, so solid and warm, and Belle is _loved_, and nothing else could matter.

She still doesn't leave the house, but the curtains are open, and the sunlight streams in as she sits on the sofa and reads fairy tales to Rose, who smacks the illustrations in the book with her chubby little hand.

She lingers on _Beauty and the Beast_, and reads it twice, tracing the words as Rose does the pictures with her fingers.

What if the beast wasn't a hairy, growling, fanged monster? What if he was well groomed, in a dark suit and tie, with a towering reputation to do all the growling for him? What if he didn't _mean_ to trap Beauty in the castle, but did all he could to protect her from the world when it came roaring at the door?

Belle had never given much thought to the old story, but now it seems strangely relevant.

She just hopes that her daughter doesn't end up the same way. Fairy tale princesses usually seem to end up poisoned or cursed or tricked, and all Belle wants is for Rose to be happy, bright and normal. For her life to be filled with good things, with everything safe and sweetly domestic.

She wonders if perhaps she should have bigger dreams for her child.

But everything she wants for herself rests in this wooden house, with her lover and child and books and sunshine, and if this is all she needs in her life, why should she expect anything else for her daughter?

Perhaps Rose will be braver than her mama. Perhaps she will be an adventurer or a dragon-slayer.

But Belle is still a rabbit, and a safe bolthole is enough for her.

She makes dinner with the radio on, dancing to songs she recognises from her youth, songs from a hundred years ago when she was a raw and foolish girl, with a heart full of painful dreams. She revels in the nostalgia, spinning in clumsy pirouettes and singing at the top of her lungs, entirely off-key and without a care in the world.

She waits until eight, but she is hungry and Gold is nowhere to be seen. So she eats her soup alone, and leaves his on the oven to be reheated later. She even tries giving a little of the broth to Rose, and is stupidly proud when she swallows it and smiles.

Her baby is growing into a sturdy little child, and it makes her heart swell.

But nine o'clock passes, and then ten, and worries begin to coil in her stomach. She decides to go for a walk to Granny's, stop by the shop on her way past and tell the stupid man to call it a night.

Of course he is hung up on inventory or a juicy new deal.

Of course he is_ fine_, and she'll take him out for a drink, a real date as a real couple, and they can save the soup for another night.

She calls Astrid, but she is overtired and can't come babysit. So it is Sister Mira who comes over to look after Rose, and she has such a warm and wide smile when she sees the baby that Belle regrets having only really kept contact with Astrid since she moved out of the convent.

She'll visit them, she decides, as she bids goodbye to Mira and tells her to help herself to anything in the kitchen, as she heads own the porch and onto the street. Soon, she'll visit the convent, or perhaps invite all her old friends over to her home, and introduce them to Rose properly.

She wonders about the wisdom of being outside at this time, with George on the loose. But the streets are fairly busy, and he wouldn't try something so publicly.

She reaches the shop, and is surprised when the lights are all off.

Perhaps he's on his way home, and took a different route, and she's simply missed him.

But something makes her open the door and peer inside, and all her hopes die in her throat.

The place is a ruin, a cavern of smashed and broken things, and Gold's cane lies on the floor by the counter, thrown carelessly aside. There is a smear of blood on the glass of the countertop. Gold's blood.

She lets out a little cry, hand clamped over her mouth to keep from screaming.

She knows who did this, knows _exactly_ what happened, even without reading the scrawled note left on the counter, in George's crude hand.

'_You'll find your boyfriend in the secret place. Come collect the body.'_

Gold is _gone_, and the world is coming apart at the seams, and George is a fucking _psychopath_ and maybe he would do it, maybe he is really capable of cold-blooded murder. She wants to scream, to cry and fall apart.

Because Gold is _gone_.

But she doesn't.

Because this is one bridge too far, one step too close to apocalypse.

George can come after her all he likes: he always has and she thinks he always will. He can scream and smash and rage, and she will run and run as fast as she can, terrified little rabbit.

But he cannot hurt those who she loves.

Not Rose, never Rose, and now Gold has come under that banner as well. And Belle was never brave, never a hero or a soldier or a warrior. But perhaps she can run but can't ever truly hide. Perhaps now it's time to try fighting instead.

Even if it means driving into the woods, to their old secret place, and finding only the body of the only man she's ever truly loved: the true father of her child, if not in blood then in action, in bond.

It's better than running and hiding in her bolthole, calling the Sheriff's cavalry and cowering under a table until the war is over.

She finds Gold's gun in its hidden place behind the counter, and tucks it into her cardigan pocket. She holds his cane over her arm, and stands for just a moment, trying to keep from shaking and disintegrating into a thousand little broken shards.

Then she grabs the car keys from their bowl in the back room, and sprints as fast as her feet can carry her, a blur on the ground beneath her, out to the long black car parked out back.

One way or another, tonight Belle will fight. Even if she's doomed to failure; even if her love is already a pile of dead flesh and bones on the cabin floor.

George Gaston has terrified her into inability for the last time.

Tonight Belle is not a frightened rabbit-girl: tonight Belle is a lion-hearted woman, a force of vengeful nature. Belle is a lover and a mother, and tonight she will live up to those titles.


	11. Chapter 11

For the first time in near-on thirty years, Gold wishes he were Rumpelstiltskin again.

If he had his powers back, he could tear his attacker limb from limb, and scatter the pieces in every corner of the forest. Such was the fate of anyone who had tried to harm him in the old world.

But here, in Storybrooke, without a charm or hex to his name, with his cane thrown carelessly aside somewhere in the middle and a man half his age and twice his size deciding to cause a problem, Gold is as close to helpless as he's been in centuries.

At least George Gaston has little imagination.

At least all he has done is smash something around the back of Gold's head and knock him unconscious, kick him a few times in the ribs for good measure, and tie him up in the boot of a car.

His leg is killing him, but he hasn't been forced to kneel.

This is an abduction, a beating, and possibly - although unlikely, knowing what he knew of the boy - an execution. But it isn't a humiliation.

The part of Gold who is still Rum, the spinner with a ruined leg and an ashamed son, is horribly thankful for that.

George's fate will be faster and less painful, in thanks for that small mercy.

But that doesn't change the fact that Gold is currently tied to a chair, with a pounding headache and aching ribs, in some Godforsaken cabin in the woods. With a six-foot-four youth glowering at him from the corner, and a gun pointed at his head.

"Do you know where you are?" the boy asks, and oh, he's trying to be mysterious and intimidating. It would be funny if it weren't for the being-tied-to-a-chair business.

"Somewhere just outside of town, I'd imagine." Gold replies, trying not to slur around his split lip.

"Keep your fucking mouth shut, then," George stands and comes into the light from the window, what moon there is illuminating his glowering face, "Or I'll blow your head off."

"You did ask me a question, dear, would I rather I didn't answer?"

Mr Gold wonders a little about the wisdom of antagonising a shaved ape with a loaded gun, when he is in little position to do so much as duck let alone dodge a bullet. However, if there's one thing he's learned from years of being threatened with swords and bows full of arrows, it's to keep an enemy off-guard.

George expects him to cower and beg for his life.

And once upon a time, he might have been right.

But Gold hasn't begged for anything in three hundred years, and whatever this situation has become does not change that.

"Shut up!"

George's fist collides with Gold's jaw, sending his head reeling and neck snapping back. His mouth is in agony, and he can taste blood where his teeth have bitten down hard on his tongue, but he tries, oh how he tries, not to show the pain he is in.

He doesn't know what George has planned for this - whether he is simply working himself up to be able to pull the trigger, or whether this is some kind of perverse trade-off with Belle, his life for Rose's.

Gold knows for certain that, if it comes to it and there is no other way out, Belle will kill him herself if it means protecting Rose.

And oddly, that fact comes high on his list of reasons why he loves her so very much.

"What're you waiting for, dearie?" he asks, his voice coming out a hoarse, pained kind of hiss.

George should keep his mouth shut.

Surely that is the first rule of holding hostage a creature who is cannier and more intelligent, more cunning than yourself? To not engage, or give your captive anything more than the bare minimum of information?

Knowledge is power, and knowledge of name, location and motive among the most powerful of all. Even in this land without magic, that fact still holds.

Mr Gold has his name: George Gaston, formerly _Sir_Gaston, a lower knight in the Court of King Maurice of the Marchlands.

And he knows they are in one of the little cabins in the woods, no more than five miles out of Storybrooke.

And now, George opens his mouth, and gives the last piece of information that he should have guarded closest of all. He even smiles as he says it, as if the war were already won and he is just waiting to collect his spoils, "Isobel's going to come find you, and then that little bitch is going to get what's coming to her."

Gold has to wonder if George has been reading a lot of bad crime novels, his words are so blunt and _unimaginative_. At least the Queen might have had more interesting cards to play, a more intricate word game to engage in. Regina might be a far cry from sane, and not exactly blessed with subtlety, but at least she's clever.

When he hypothesised the creature who could imprison him against his will and do violence without instant retribution, in all his years Mr Gold had never imagined a simplistic and brutish village idiot with a handgun and a grudge.

An oversight, it seems.

But at least, he'll live until Belle arrives.

Which means that someone, even if that someone is wildly unpredictable and most likely somewhat unstable, knows he is here.

Perhaps she's going to be bright, and call the Sheriff instead. Emma Swan could have George on the ground within moments, gun pressed to the back of his head and arms cuffed behind his back.

He's afraid – terrified, truth be told – though, that his lover won't do that at all.

Belle wouldn't call for the police and then leave them to do their work. Belle would either run and run and keep running, try and fail to leave Storybrooke and end up in the hospital - or worse, in Regina's 'special care', or even dead - or she would come and fight herself.

Who knows better than Mr Gold, who had been Rumpelstiltskin so _very_long ago, how vicious a seemingly harmless animal could become when backed into a corner?

He doesn't know if he worries for her, for her safety if she runs or her sanity if she chooses to fight, or for George's healthy if she fights with claws and teeth and shredding fangs.

It is another half hour – thirty minutes of throbbing wounds, of trickling blood from a head wound and laboured, painful breathing – before headlights appear in the window. A car door slams, and George, who has been a silent and malevolent shadow in the corner all this time, rises to his feet and readies his pistol.

Belle's hair is tangled, her eyes wild, when she appears in the doorway. She can only be seen through the gloom due George's torch in her face, and the moonlight trickling in from outside.

She looks more furious than any creature Gold has ever beheld, with burning hellfire in her eyes and firm, unshaken limbs: a weapon set firmly on its purpose.

She carries his cane over one arm, and his pistol in her pale little hand.

"Back the fuck off, George, or I swear to God you'll regret it."

Gold doesn't know if he is proud of her, or completely and utterly appalled.

* * *

Belle has never been so angry in all her life.

Not the night she was thrown out of her childhood home, and abandoned to the world and its wolves by her own father.

Not the early morning when she ran for her life, scarred and burned and pregnant, and ended up at the door of a convent convinced she would be dead by nightfall.

Then she had been scared, lost, and deeply miserable. Anger had been an afterthought, something overshadowed by self-pity and recriminations, by a deep and abiding terror of tomorrow.

Now, her lover is tied to a chair, beaten and bruised and bleeding, and her tormentor is _sneering_ down at her, threatening, a gun pointed at Gold's head. She knew she wouldn't need much more provocation, much more of a _reason_, to pull the trigger and end this once and for all.

Because Belle has been threatened and punished and warned and patronised all her life. And she has never been so angry, so ready to simply destroy anyone and everyone in her way.

And yet, somehow, it's still more than that. Because Belle is not some lonely avenging angel, and she is not a predator on the hunt or a sword drawn from a sheathe. Belle is a _mother_, and Belle is in _love_, and nothing matters more than those two simple facts.  
The monster before her wants to tear a hole in her world, and Belle is _furious_.

But this isn't about her. Perhaps it should be, perhaps fighting for herself first and foremost would make this whole thing so much simpler, easier, a life for a life. But this isn't about her.  
She doesn't want Rose to have to live with the knowledge that her mother murdered her biological father. That is a burden no child should carry.

Even if her daughter's _real_father, the man who by rights should have been so in all ways, in blood and bond and everything else, is the man tied to the chair, and not the man holding the gun.

"What're you going to do, _babe_?" George smirks, and the sly expression seems alien and utterly ridiculous on his brutish face, "You going to use that water pistol?"

"Let him go, George."

"No." He takes the safety off of the gun, the click audible through the cabin, and Belle should be so scared, so terrified. She should be hurling herself at George's feet, begging for Gold's life, unable to do or say anything more

But the woman who would have trembled and cried, the weak little rabbit-girl who has never done more than run, is burned and dead and buried. Belle is a _mother_, and now she is a lioness, a phoenix born from ashes. And here is where she starts her fires, and fights her battle.

This is the end of the story: this is where the war is won, and the world realigns itself.

"I'm serious," she leans on Gold's cane, draws more strength from it, the strength of the man who held and absorbed every cry and tear, who took her in from the cold and coaxed her from under the table and even now, even when he is so weak and so _broken_, is the one who makes her brave.  
The calm of raw and murderous rage makes her stance almost casual, almost practiced and uncaring, as she raises the gun, "Let him go."

"You want your boyfriend back? Fine. Let me have my kid and we'll call it even."

And she must have known, must have thought at some moment that Rose would be what he is after. Of course she is: Belle herself would – and can and _will_– kill with her bare hands for that baby girl. But George isn't doing this for love: George feels she has something that belongs to him, and he won't stand for being stolen from.

The fact that, the one time he'd been near Rose, all he'd done was shout and threaten and hiss is, apparently, beside the point.

Her daughter is not property to be traded. Rose is a girl with a beaming smile and a bright, wonderful life in front of her: Rose is a princess in need of protection.

And somewhere, Belle has become a knight in armour, ready to slash flesh and hack bone to keep that smile in place.

She is a warrior, and so she cocks her pistol and aims it at George's chest, "Get the fuck out of here, George, or so help me I will _kill you where you stand_."

"Why not kill your boyfriend instead, huh Is? Then we can be a family."

"He's Rose's father, not you." she grinds out, his use of that word like gas on a flame, roaring and consuming her, a kind of red mist descending. She can feel what had been left of her reason slipping away, and she lets it go without regret.

His face darkens, any trace of his terrible charming psychopath act long gone and lost. He is an ogre, a _monster_with a face to match, and a growling, threatening voice, "Take that back."

Maybe she had been wrong: maybe he _is_ doing this out of some twisted, perverted paternal instinct, out of some pale _imitation_of love.

The very idea just makes her all the more certain that he needs to be gone. Forever.

He'd said he loved her, too, right before he cut her face and burned her skin.

His love is violent and dangerous, corrosive and acidic. It is jealous and possessive, and it burns through and destroys everything it touched. The idea of it even coming within a mile of Rose makes Belle's blood boil.

But she's found the monster's weakness, and so she continues to drive the knife in deeper, "I love him, George, and so does Rose. _We_are family, and you're not going to fuck that up."

"Oh, yeah?" He nods, voice shaking and eyes manic, and for the first time since she arrived Belle is genuinely frightened. "Family, huh? With this fucking bastard?" He turns to Gold, gun raised and hand shaking, and Belle wants to hurl herself forward, put herself between her love and the bullet.

"See how far family gets you in Hell." George spits, and in the split second between his words and the movement of his finger, Belle lunges forwards and full-body tackles, her weight and momentum sending them crashing to the cabin floor.

The gun fires; Gold slumps in his chair.

Belle looks up, and sees his still and crumpled form. She screams, an incoherent howl, the cry of an animal in mortal pain. She still holds Gold's cane in her hand, the gun having skittered off to the side, and she brings it down as hard as she can again and again and again, onto every soft and vulnerable inch of George's worthless body.

"Stop!" Gaston yells, "Isobel, please!"

She doesn't hear him, all she can hear is pounding, rushing, roaring blood and that gunshot, that crack that shattered the Universe.

"He's _gone_!" she cries, and she's sobbing as she brings her weapon down again and again "Forever, you _took him away from me_!"

She can feel ribs crack and cuts form on his skin, and yet she keeps going. Even as he pleads and begs for her to stop, even as his nose breaks beneath her bruised and bloodied fist and his face becomes a swollen mess of cuts and welts.

"It's your fault! _It's all your fault_!"

Because Mr Gold is cold and still in his chair, and this is the beast who shot him.

Because she has been alone for the past eight years, and this is the man who tore away everything she loved, everyone who cared for her, who made sure she stayed alone, that all happiness was tainted.

Because her heart has been ripped into a hundred bleeding little shreds of flesh, and she cannot stop, not ever, she drops the cane and goes forth with nails and fists, beating holes and pits into his soft – _curiously fragile, when all was said and done_– skin. His bones break as easily as anything, like snapping toothpicks.

She cannot stop, and only when he is unconscious, bleeding from the head and entirely still, only when he is _defeated_, does she see past her bloodlust and remember her lover, slumped in the chair.

And she can hardly see for tears, hardly hear for her own wailing cries, but she pulls what she can of her skin back together and stands, staggers across the room to the chair containing what is left of her lover, and throws her arms over his shoulder, cradling his body in her arms.

She's sobbing into his blood-stained jacket, broken and screaming and two inches from insane.  
The world has been torn apart and sent careening into Hell, and Belle can't feel anything, not one moment of any of it. Everything is in her pounding, fraying heart and trembling bones and sickened stomach: everything is his cold and shattered body.

But then, out of nowhere, when all is gone and lost, he groans, a grunt of pain. Then again, and the tiny little sound cuts through her sobbing long enough for her to pull back, to look at him.

"Gold?" she asks, voice tinier than she's ever heard it, so desperate for it to be true, for there to have been a genuine sign of life.

"B-" he coughs, struggles, and she rushes to loosen the ropes, to untie the crude knots Gaston bound him with. "Belle?"

And now she's crying again, but her tears are pure joy as she kisses his swollen and bleeding face, his black eyes and temples. She is kissing every part of him she can find, every inch of his face, hoping that she can somehow heal him with just her lips, just the hopes brimming on her tongue.

He falls forward and she catches him, easing him to the ground. There is a nasty bullet wound in his shoulder, where Gaston shot him, but he is conscious and breathing and it's like the world is coming back to life, like the sunrise after twenty years of night.

She cradles his head in her arms, "You're alive." She weeps, as she brings his head up to hers and kisses his mouth, trying not to drown, trying to breathe in everything that he is. "You're alive, oh my God, you're alive," she whispers it again and again, like a blessing and a prayer. "I love you so much, I love you..."

"I love you," he manages to speak, just about, and she kisses his lips, sealing the words between them, as if it will keep them true, stop anything from ever tearing them apart.

"Ambulance?" he says, and she stares at him in confusion, brain shut down and unable to process.

"Sorry?"

"Bullet wound?" he says, and cracks a weak little smile, and she doesn't know how he can still be thinking straight and _smiling_after all that has happened.

She pulls her cell phone out of her cardigan pocket and dials 911.

* * *

Mr Gold hadn't known that he had as many bones as he does, but they're all apparently fractured or broken.

Well, 'all' is an overstatement. He has a fractured left arm, serious damage to his left shoulder and some severe bruising to his face.

His arm and shoulder will take time and physiotherapy, but in the process of sorting it out they also took a look at his knee. Dr Whale had told him just this morning that, if he wanted, they could include his bad leg in the surgery and physio, and perhaps he'll be able to walk without a cane within twelve months.

It's funny: twenty-eight years since he became human again, and he never considered that modern medicine could help with his Ogre War injury from three centuries and a whole world ago.

And yet, despite all his wounds, his situation is still not half as bad as the condition that George is in. He's still in intensive care, although the paramedics got to him in enough time that he'll live, and probably make something resembling a full recovery. Gold hopes that it will be a slow and painful one.

His little Belle has done some serious damage to him, but Dr Whale is doing his level best to put it right.

Mr Gold wakes up in his hospital bed, and misses her instantly.

She'd held his hand all the way to the hospital, and stayed with him as long as she possibly could before he was told to get some rest and she was sent home.

He knows it's for the best: she needs to be with Rose right now.

It didn't mean that the pain of her absence wasn't like an axe-wound in his back. He hopes that this feeling will wear off: it'll be awfully inconvenient if he has to be in physical pain whenever she is not by his side for the rest of his life.

But, no, there she is, coming down the empty ward to his bedside, with Rose in her arms.  
His heart is singing some ridiculous little happy song, and he has no intention at all of telling it to shut up.

Because Belle is _whole_, with just a few bandages on her knuckles, and here, and _smiling_, and the world makes sense again.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, after she's leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, and taken a seat in the armchair by his bed.

"Like I've been run over with a steamroller," he answers, "You?"

She gives a curious little laugh, short and a little sad, "Pretty much the same." She looks at him, eyes narrowed, and he has to wonder what she could possibly be thinking about, "Can you sit up?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Lounging." She smirks at him, and he takes her challenge.

He sits up properly, uses the little controls on his bed to prop him up, and she snickers at him.

"What?" he asks, frowning, a little affronted.

"You better not get used to having one of those," she warns, "You'll be home soon where there're no reclining beds." She giggles at the mock-misery on his face, and he can't help but grin, her laugh is so infectious. Then, she gathers Rose securely in her arms, and places her firmly in Gold's lap, leaning her against his good right arm, which is miraculously unharmed and intact.

He's utterly stunned.

She's never willingly handed him her child before, and even though he loves her, knows she feels the same, it's still a massive gesture.

Rose doesn't seem to notice much: she just looks at him, all wide blue eyes the same shade as her mother's, and then goes back to her careful examination of her own fist.

He holds her close, this precious little thing, his daughter in all but blood, and his heart feels it might burst it's so full.

"I'm..." she looks down, as if she can't think of what to say. He can sympathise: there're so many things she needs to hear, and he can't pick which one should be said first. "I'm sorry about... with George. You shouldn't have been dragged into that."

And of all the things for her to say, that's the worst and yet the most expected. Because of course she would blame herself, because she's Belle and she can't understand why someone would willingly walk through fire for her, that he would have died in that cabin and thought it a worthwhile death if it meant that she was safe.

Mr Gold - who was once Rumpelstiltskin, a selfish, lying coward - would have willingly laid down his life for this battered, heartsick woman and her child. Somehow, in between kisses and freshly-laundered sheets, midnight talks and peaceful co-existence, Belle - who was once Isobel, a frightened rabbit on the run - has made him brave.

"You came and saved my life, beat a man half to death, and you think it's _me_ you have to apologise to?" he shakes his head, trying not to shake _her_, trying not to reach for her and attempt to physically pull this part of her out, and grind it beneath his heel.

"George was trying to get to me." She says, "And because of that, you're in the hospital. So, yes, I'm apologising, because it's my fault that you got hurt."

"Did you come to my shop and smash a heavy vase around the back of my head?"

"No, of course not, but-"

"And did you tie me up, drag me into the woods and give me two black eyes and a mouth full of blood?"

She winced, but shook her head, "No."

"And did you shoot me in the shoulder?"

"He shot you to try and get to me."

"Exactly. _He_shot me. That's it, that's the end of it, the man's a psychopath and a criminal, and he did all of that on his own. And how you can still blame yourself for his crimes is beyond me."

She's staring at him, the hurt in her eyes raw and deep and oh, so fresh. She _wants_to believe him, he can see that, but maybe some wounds are too deep for bandages and anaesthetic. "He wasn't like this before me." She murmurs, "He never would have done this."

"What did I tell you, three months ago?" he asks, and his voice is harsher than perhaps it should be, although his hands stay gentle and soothing on Rose's head and back.

"I... don't remember. Lots of things."

"After the first time George Gaston caused a problem, when you first started spouting this nonsense,  
'turning men into monsters' or something, do you remember what I told you?"

"That I was insane?" she asks, eyebrows raised in a feeble attempt at humour. But he's intent, determined: he doesn't let her off that easily.

"No. I warned you that if you said anything like that again, I would be forced to do something drastic."

"Oh." She's chewing her lip, and he wishes he could just kiss her and never stop. But he has to say this first, and it's going to be a while before he's well enough to do anything anyway, and this is more important than one more kiss out of a hundred thousand. "What're you going to do?"

He can see the fear lurking behind her eyes, the stupid apprehension that he hopes she won't always carry. She's probably imagining that he'll tell her to move out of the house, hurl her back into her father's home.

Knowing what state he found her in back in the old world, their true first meeting, there wasn't a chance in Hell that that would happen.

But she has more issues and emotional walls than even he himself, and so she worries.

"I'm going to... make a liar of you." he grins, knowing that she won't understand and enjoying her confusion.

"I'm sorry?"

"There you go again," he's almost laughing, shifting Rose to lie across his lap so he can feel under his pillow for the packet that Sister Astrid brought over this morning. He might or might not have offered to slash the nuns' rent in half this month in return for her running a little errand. He is feeling generous, this day of all days, and the little parcel from his shop is in his hands, and he can't keep the smile from his face, "You need to stop apologising, dearie."

"You're going to make a liar of me?" she frowns, still confused but unable to be annoyed when he's grinning so widely, "I don't understand..."

"You said you make men into monsters, correct? I'm going to prove you wrong."

"How?"

He pulls a little box out of the parcel, and hands it to her almost negligently, resting Rose back across his arm and watching with concealed attention as Belle opens the ring box, her frown turning to an expression of utter surprise.

She looks back to him, and his eyes are on her face, "Monsters don't get married, now do they?"

She stares at him dumbfounded, and slowly shakes her head. "Are-are you sure?" her voice is trembling, and that that should even be in question is a sorry state of affairs. He vows to spend the rest of his life, however long that would be, correcting it.

"Why wouldn't I be? One more deal, hmm? Marry me."

She's crying, and staring at him, and for all of two seconds he's afraid she's found a reason to say no, a way of running away from this as well.

But then she's beaming, and nodding, and her arms are around his neck and she's hugging him as tight as she can without hurting him, without crushing their daughter.


End file.
